Word to PDF

[#1]

I would like to confirm LiveCycle PDF Generator does a few things before my company makes any sort of purchase.



I run a PHP website under Windows S2003 which generates DocX documents, our client has now asked for these documents to also be available in PDF.



However the PDF needs to be generated from the DocX file and not directly created from the script.



I am after a command line utility in LiveCycle PDF Generator which will take a file.docx and output file.pdf.



Is LiveCycle PDF Generator the right product? If not do Adobe offer a product which does this?



I tried to find an email address to ask this question but after 15 clicks I gave up. If it is the case I should email this question, who do I email?

[#2]

Hi Nick,

I have a similar requirement, where in, I need to convert a .docx fiel to a PDF. I have managed to figure out that the Adone Livecycle server provides web services which can convert a given .doc into to a PDF, but I haven't yet found any solution from Adobe, which can convert a .docx to PDF.



Have you managed to resolve your issue, if yes could you please let me know the solution.



Thanks,

Prabs

[#3]

I did look at a few webservices myself but they all seemed slow, 2 minutes processing time for a 1-3 page docx file (~130KB).



I would have thought Adobe would want to encourage users to convert a 'Microsoft' format into their own format.



Sorry I can't remember the URL for the webservices, which just shows how impressed I was with them.



Two months without a reply, anyone from Adobe want to try selling me a Docx to PDF converter?

[#4]

Thanks for your reply, Nick.

I think you might have saved me from some efforts of trying to get the Adobe web service running.



I am planning to spend some more time, exploring alternative options for PDF creation, would update you, if I get lucky..



Thanks....

Prabs

[#5]

There is another post in the forum, where some one has used Adobe Livecycle ES Server's web services to convert docx to PDF, but with a pre-condition that one must have MS Word 2007 installed on the machine.



It seems, even livecycle internally uses Word 2007 to do the onversion.



Here is a link, which has a solution that tries to use Open Office word instead of MS Word to convert docx to PDFs:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/generatepdf.aspx

[#6]

I have also looked at using a PDF print driver for the conversion process, but the whole process is too slow and could become unstable with multiple documents being converted at the same time.



Do you have a like to that forum post?



I will definitely investigate the generatepdf project, have never used C# but if needs must.



Thanks Prabs

[#7]

I couldn't find the post, but I had copied the contents of the post:



-----------------------------------------------------------

Yogesh Gandhi said on Sep 25, 2008 at 1:15 AM :

Hi,



I used the above code for converting word 2 pdf.

It works fine for DOC file.



But when i give DOCX file as input, i.e. office 2007 word file

It fails with the following message...



ALC-PDG-001-039-Microsoft Office was not able to open the document that was submitted for conversion.



Can anybody give me the hint, about how can i convert .DOCX file to PDF



Is there any seperate API to be used for that..



Thanks in Advance



Yogesh



yogesh249@gmail.com



-----------------------------------------------------------------

And this is the link, which has documentation about how to use Livecycle server APIs and web services to generate the PDF:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/es/sdkHelp/programmer/sdkHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm



The sections Invoking livecycle ES and API quick starts could be of you interest.



The web services / APIs could be used from Java or .Net code.



Regards,

Prabs...

[#8]

Hello Nick,



The newest version of LiveCycle PDF Generator ES, version 8.2 aka Update 1 converts DOCX to PDF. It looks like we have an oversight on our web pages, which I will fix as soon as possible.



Christy Hubbard - LiveCycle PDF Generator Product Marketing Manager

[#9]

Christy,

I have installed Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator on my machine. But when I try to use it to convert a .docx file to a PDF, I can see that it first tries to create an instance of MS Word. Does livecycle PDF generator internally uses MS Word to convert docx into PDFs?



If so then it is a bit problematic, as it is a time consuming activity to launch WORD every time a request is made for converting docx to PDF. Plus WORD is not really a server side object and can cause some issues, if one tries to use it as server side object.



Also it means that LiveCycle PDF generator won't be able to covert a docx into PDF if MS Word is not installed on the server.



Please correct me, if my observation is incorrect.



Thanks,

Prabs

[#10]

Dear Prabs,



yes PDF generator needs MS Word to be installed to do the conversion. The reason behind that is to use the original software to ensure that the docx and the resulting PDF match. Also it gives you the ability to have bookmarks etc. created.



Regarding the performance PDF Generator Word is not started every time but kept in the background so after the initial start it's only opening the document.



Regarding stability if setup correctly it's stable e.g. we have a user in Germany where the server was running for 3 month without any issues.



At first I had the same concerns you had but after some projects I must say that PDF Generator does it's job.



Kind regards

Maruan

www.fileaffairs.de

[#11]

Hi Maruan,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I can understand the reasons why the PDF generator would need MS Word for the conversion, and also agree that the PDF generator must be doing its job well, but my concern is MS Word.

Most of the products, which use MS Word in an invisible mode, would invoke MS Word using COM interop calls (Adobe PDF Generator can be an exception, as I do know the details of it).

And when Word is launched in this fashion, there could a number of potential issues like getting Message Filter issue - when Word instance becomes unresponsive or getting Co-Create instance error, etc.

And this is the reason I am a bit reluctant to go for a PDF Generator solution which uses MS Word.



But thanks once again for your response.



Regards,

Prabs Chavan

[#12]

Hi Prabs,



I do understand your concerns but I would suggest that you give it a try. There are several mechanisms implemented to "stabilize" Word.



I think one has to make a decision to use a converter based solution or an application automation based solution. Having worked with both I think there are applications where I would prefer the conversion based option over the automation based one and vive versa. At the end it depends on the kind of result you expect. The closer the result should be to how users see the word document when they created it the better an automation based solutions meets that requirement.



As I outlined in an earlier post I know of companies running severals thousand documents through PDF Generator without any issues.



On the other hand we also created solutions based on alternative technologies when needed - but our preferences is PDF Generator first.



Good look with your selection.



Maruan

www.fileaffairs.de

[adib4u2009]

Hi

     I also got the same error "Error Message: ALC-PDG-010-012-PDFMaker reported an error while printing the document"  while converting Word to PDF using Adobe LiveCycle PDF generator.

Can u please help me..