OfficeToPDF

Giving back to the community

Cognidox would not exist without the help of many open source projects. Perl, Apache and Solr are just a few of the excellent open source packages that help make CogniDox a leading document management system. So, to show our appreciation, we’ve released a couple of open source projects such as OfficeToPDF to help others.

OfficeToPDF - what does it do?

OfficeToPDF is a command line utility that converts Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016 documents from their native format into PDF using Office’s in-built PDF export features.

Most Office to PDF converter tools are intended as single-user desktop applications. OfficeToPDF is useful (and unique) if you want to automatically create PDF files on a server-wide basis and free individual users from an extra step of using the “Save as…” command on their Office files. These PDF files can then be stored and managed on a separate server. This can be useful if, for example, a department has a policy of only distributing PDF versions of documents to people outside the department.

There are some technical requirements that must be met before you can use it:

.NET Framework 4
Office 2016, 2013, 2010 or Office 2007

If you are using Office 2007, you will also need:

Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime [Download]
2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS [Download]

It is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Supported File Types

The following file types can be converted:

Word (.doc, .dot, .docx, .dotx, .docm, .dotm, .rtf, .wpd)
Excel (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .xlt, .xltx, .xltm, .csv)
Powerpoint (.ppt, .pptx, .pptm, .pps, .ppsx, .ppsm, .pot, .potx, .potm)
Visio (.vsd, .vsdx, .vsdm, .svg) [Requires >= Visio 2013 for .svg, .vsdx and .vsdm support]
Publisher (.pub)
Outlook (.msg, .vcf, .ics)
Project (.mpp) [Requires Project >= 2010 for .mpp support]
OpenOffice (.odt, .odp, .ods)

Conversion of Visio, Publisher and Project files require that the Visio, Publisher and Project applications are installed. These are not included in the Office standard package.

Instructions

In order to use the tool, download the officetopdf.exe file and, from the command line, run officetopdf.exe with two arguments - the source Office document and the destination PDF document. e.g.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\test> officetopdf.exe somefile.docx somefile.pdf

Command line switches

The following optional switches can be used:

Switch	Description
/bookmarks	create bookmarks in the PDF when they are supported by the Office application
/readonly	attempts to open the source document in read-only mode
/print	create high-quality PDFs optimised for print
/hidden	attempts to minimise the Office application when converting
/template template	use a .dot, .dotx or .dotm template when converting with Word
/markup	show document markup when creating PDFs with Word
/pdfa	produce ISO 19005-1 (PDF/A) compliant PDFs
/noquit	do not exit running Office applications
/excludeprops	do not include properties in generated PDF
/excludetags	do not include tags in generated PDF
/password password	provide a read password to open the file with
/writepassword password	provide a read/write password to open the file with
/merge	when using a template, create a new file from the template and merge the text from the document to convert into the new file
/excel_show_formulas	show formulas in Excel
/excel_show_headings	shows column and row headings
/excel_max_rows rows	allow a limit on the number of rows to convert
/excel_active_sheet	only convert the currently active worksheet in a spreadsheet
/excel_worksheet num	only convert worksheet num in the workbook. First sheet is 1
/excel_auto_macros	run Auto_Open macros in Excel files before conversion
/excel_no_link_update	do not update links when opening Excel files
/excel_no_recalculate	skip automatic re-calculation of formulas in the workbook
/word_header_dist pts	the distance (in points) from the header to the top of the page
/word_footer_dist pts	the distance (in points) from the footer to the bottom of the page
/word_field_quick_update	perform a fast update of fields in Word before conversion
/word_fix_table_columns	update table column widths to match table heading column widths
/word_keep_history	do not clear Word’s recent files list
/word_max_pages pages	do not attempt conversion of a Word document if it has more than this number of pages
/word_no_field_update	do not update fields when creating the PDF
/word_ref_fonts	when fonts are not available, a reference to the font is used in the generated PDF rather than a bitmapped version. The default is for a bitmap of the text to be used
/word_show_comments	show comments when /markup is used
/word_show_revs_comments	show revisions and comments when /markup is used
/word_show_format_changes	show format changes when /markup is used
/word_show_ink_annot	show ink annotations when /markup is used
/word_show_ins_del	show all markup when /markup is used
/word_show_all_markup	show all markup content when /markup is used
/word_markup_balloon	show balloon style markup messages rather than inline ones
/fallback_printer	print the document to postscript printer for conversion when the main conversion routine fails. Requires Ghostscript to be installed
/printer	print the document to postscript printer for conversion. Requires Ghostscript to be installed
/pdf_clean_meta type	allows for some meta-data to be removed from the generated PDF type can be: basic - removes author, keywords, creator and subject full - removes all that basic removes and also the title
/pdf_layout layout	controls how the pages layout in Acrobat Reader layout can be one of the following values: onecol - show pages as a single scrolling column single - show pages one at a time twocolleft - show pages in two columns, with odd-numbered pages on the left twocolright - show pages in two columns, with odd-numbered pages on the right twopageleft - show pages two at a time, with odd-numbered pages on the left twopageright - show pages two at a time, with odd-numbered pages on the right
/pdf_page_mode mode	controls how the PDF will open with Acrobat Reader mode can be one of the following values: full - the PDF will open in fullscreen mode bookmarks - the PDF will open with the bookmarks visible thumbs - the PDF will open with the thumbnail view visible none - the PDF will open without the navigation bar visible
/pdf_append	append the generated PDF to the end of the PDF destination
/pdf_prepend	prepend the generated PDF to the start of the PDF destination
/pdf_owner_pass pass	set the owner password on the PDF. Needed to make modifications to the PDF
/pdf_user_pass pass	set the user password on the PDF. Needed to open the PDF
/pdf_restrict_accessibility_extraction	Prevent all content extraction without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_annotation	prevent annotations on the PDF without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_assembly	prevent rotation, removal or insertion of pages without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_extraction	prevent content extraction without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_forms	prevent form entry without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_full_quality	prevent full quality printing without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_modify	prevent modification without the owner password
/pdf_restrict_print	prevent printing without the owner password
/verbose	print out messages as it runs
/version	print out the version of OfficeToPDF and exit
/working_dir path	a path to copy the input file into temporarily when running the conversion

Error Codes

The following error codes are returned by OfficeToPDF. Note that multiple errors are returned as a bitmask, so bitwise operations can test for multiple errors.

0 - Success
1 - Failure
2 - Unknown Error
4 - File protected by password
8 - Invalid arguments
16 - Unable to open the source file
32 - Unsupported file format
64 - Source file not found
128 - Output directory not found
256 - The requested worksheet was not found
512 - Unable to use an empty worksheet
1024 - Unable to modify or open a protected PDF
2048 - Raised when there is a problem calling an Office application
4096 - There are no printers installed, so Office conversion can not proceed

About CogniDox

CogniDox is a web-based, document management software tool aimed primarily at supporting high-tech product development. It enables better product lifecycle management and knowledge transfer from developers to partners, clients and customers.

We provide highly-integrated support for system engineering workflows and the product lifecycle. Plug-ins are provided for CMS products, software SCM tools, EDA tools, CRM systems, CAD tools and Help Desk applications. Our “Xtranet” solution enables companies to add a secure self-service customer portal onto their public web sites.

Based in Cambridge, UK since its formation in 2008, CogniDox has an impressive portfolio of blue chip users – see examples at https://www.cognidox.com/customers