This is a frustratingly common problem, and it deserves a straightforward answer: Excel is not a layout tool, and it never has been. The user who meticulously adjusted row heights, toggled wrap text, and tried every export method only to watch their formatting dissolve into uneven white space is not doing something wrong. They are hitting the hard limit of what a spreadsheet was designed to do.
The core issue is that Excel prioritizes data structure over visual presentation. When you set a row height to exactly fit your text on screen, you are asking a calculation engine to act like a design program. It will approximate your intent, but it will not honor it. The extra space that appears in the PDF is Excel's way of resolving conflicts between font rendering, printer drivers, and its own internal measurement system. Every user who has fought with row heights in PDF exports has experienced this same silent betrayal. The software is not broken. It is simply the wrong tool for the job.
For this archivist working with letter summaries, the practical solution is to stop trying to force Excel to behave like a page-layout application. Instead, move the data into a tool that treats formatting as a first-class citizen. A dedicated PDF generator built into a modern spreadsheet environment can preserve exact row heights, column widths, and spacing without reinterpretation. Or, for a project this specific, export the data as plain text and compose the document in a word processor or desktop publishing tool. The time spent manually tweaking row heights across 33 pages could have been spent once building a clean template in the right software.
The lesson here is not about a single frustrating afternoon. It is about recognizing when a tool's limitations are costing you more than its strengths. A spreadsheet is excellent for calculation, sorting, and analysis. It is poor at controlling the final appearance of a printed document. Accept that distinction, and you free yourself to choose the right instrument for each stage of the work. For this user, the next step is clear: stop exporting from Excel and start building in a tool that respects your layout intentions from the first click.