Export a LibreOffice Calc Chart to PDF witouth margins and empty space

Question

My aim is to export a LibreOffice Calc chart in PDF in order to use it with LaTex later.

I made a 16cm width and 9cm high graph. I would like to get a PDF without border and lot of empty space.

So I went to : file -> export as PDF-> selection...

However even with the selection option, I get a graph in a small pat of a A4 page with margins and empty space...

Answer 1

Good question, since the settings are very misleading.

To my knowledge, it is not possible to directly save to pdf as you are hoping to do. However, there is a bit of a workaround that will still let you embed a vector graphs from Open/LibreOffice in your LaTeX documents:

1. Select and copy (ctrl+c) your graph.
2. Open LibreOffice Draw
3. Paste your graph from Calc into Draw
4. Select the graph, and go to File --> Export, select EPS from the list of formats, and make sure the selection box is checked:

I haven't tried the other formats, but EPS should play nicely with your LaTeX document, or you can easily convert your EPS to PDF and insert them.

Here is a side by side comparison of trying the export setting with PDF (left--ends up centered on the page) and EPS (right--exports just the graph).

Answer 2

I was faced to the same problem, and after trying different methods, I finally found a simple and great way to do that. Simply use the pdfcrop tool by tapping this simple command line:

    pdfcrop inputFile.pdf outputFile.pdf

Hope it will be helpful!