Embed-sheet - extension For Quarto

A Quarto extension that embeds spreadsheet files as images in your documents.

You can embed LibreOffice or Excel documents of which the first page of a sheet is rendered as image and embedded in the Quarto document.

Features

• Converts Excel (.xls, .xlsx) and LibreOffice Calc (.ods) files to images
• Uses LibreOffice headless for high-fidelity rendering
• Supports custom width and output format (jpg, png)
• Caches converted images to speed up subsequent renders

Motivation

We build this extension as we wanted to convert our ISO27001 policies from Microsoft Word to Quarto Markdown. While most aspects of the documents improved instantly, we got major headaches from getting the embedded tables rendered correctly. As hard as we tried, even using raw latex they just couldn't compete with the easily made tables from inside Word.

You could say this extension is a concession to WYSIWYG apps like those from the Office 365 suite. That may be true, but this extension also brings many new ways to create beautiful, publications with Quarto.

Installing

quarto add wearetechnative/embed-sheet

This will install the extension under the _extensions subdirectory. If you're using version control, you will want to check in this directory.

Requirements

• Quarto (https://quarto.org/) 1.3+
• LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/) (for headless conversion)
• ImageMagick (https://imagemagick.org) if using auto_trim_exterior_white

Usage

Shortcode

{{< embedSheet my-spreadsheet.ods >}}
{{< embedSheet data.xlsx width=50% >}}
{{< embedSheet report.ods format=png >}}
{{< embedSheet report.ods format=png auto_trim_exterior_white=true >}}

Shortcode arguments

option	default	description
width	100%	Width of the final image in the quarto document
format	jpg	The image format to render. Choose: jpg/png
auto_trim_exterior_white	false	Use convert to auto trim exterior white space

Preparing the spreadsheet document

You should prepare your spreadsheet for optimal rendering. Check the following settings.

Currently only rendering of the first sheet is supported.

1. Set Print Ranges to the area you want to render.
2. In Page Format:
   • choose landscape or portrait
   • disable header
   • disable footer
   • disable page numbers
   • update with and height (if not using auto_trim_exterior_white)
   • set margins to 0 (if not using auto_trim_exterior_white)

Tips:

• Don't forget to save your documents after changing above settings
• Set the view to Page Breaks
• Use the Print Preview functionality to check the output of your document.

Example

Here is the source code for a minimal example: example.qmd.