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Excel to PDF conversion

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Level 1

Hi,

I would like to know does 'Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator' use Microsoft Office or Open Office Automation inside to convert Excel files to PDF.

I'm currently looking for a solution that DOES NOT need Microsoft Excel or Open office to do the conversions.

I would also like to now in an average how long it would take to convert a Excel File to PDF ?

Please Help.

Thanks !

9 Replies

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Level 8

Yes, PDF Generator does use MS Office or Open Office to convert native (Excel) files.  In truth it actually uses the Acrobat plugin for MS Office to perform the actual conversion.

Performance depends on a number of factors including server hardware, the application server type and setup, number of concurrent requests, size and complexity of document etc. 

With LiveCycle ES2 you can also configure the server to convert multiple concurrent requests on a single server instance. This has significant performance benefits when dealing with multiple concurrent requests.

We'd have to look at your use case in much more detail to be able to provide you with performance numbers with any usable accuracy.

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Level 3

I'm currently looking for a solution that DOES NOT need Microsoft Excel or Open office to do the conversions.

In order for LC PDFG to work, you need to have the native application installed. So you NEED to have atleast 1 of these two things - MS Office or Open Office.

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Level 1

can you tell me how to do this?

With LiveCycle ES2 you can also configure the server to convert multiple concurrent requests on a single server instance. This has significant performance benefits when dealing with multiple concurrent requests.

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Level 8

You need to add a few new users to the server.  Each of them must have access to the native applications (Office or Open Office).

If you are installing PDFG then there is a dialog in the setup that allows you to add the users.

If you already have it installed then launch the adminui web page (http://server:port/adminui) and go to: Home > Services >LiveCycle PDF Generator ES2 > User Accounts.  Then add the new users.

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Level 1

You said excel cannot do multi thread, what about power point?

V/R,

Matt Unger

DFAS-Indianapolis

phone:317-212-8703 dsn:699-8703

Technical Services Organization - Corporate Services

Development Team

Please note - My phone number has changed to (317) 212-8703. The DSN number will remain 699-8703.

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Level 8

It works for all of the Office software.

Essentially what happens is each PDFG request for an Office document is launched under one of the user accounts.  Once all of the user accounts are used, subsequent requests are queued until an account becomes available.

For example; if I add 3 users: Abe, Bob and Charlie.

The first request will be converted under Abe's account. The second request uses Bob's.  The third uses Charlie's.  A fourth request will wait until one of the other three is done.

It sounds a bit odd, but Office isn't thread safe for a single user, so this is the only option available.

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Level 1

If I built a process that can take up to 20 files in a livecycle process, convert them to pdf and use ddx to put them in a package. Does each user who uses the LC process only use one user account? I mean one account will convert a file then release it and move on to the next file.

V/R,

Matt Unger

DFAS-Indianapolis

phone:317-212-8703 dsn:699-8703

Technical Services Organization - Corporate Services

Development Team

Please note - My phone number has changed to (317) 212-8703. The DSN number will remain 699-8703.

Avatar

Level 8

I think your confusing the LiveCycle users with the system users for PDFG.  They are not the same thing.

Abe, Bob and Charlie are not LiveCycle users and are probably not in the LiveCycle User Manager system (or your LDAP).  These are three operating system level users that are configured in the Windows environment that is hosting your LiveCycle server. 

The LiveCycle system will determine what conversion requests use which system account.  There is nothing that you need to do in the process design to direct the requests.  It all happens under the covers.

Lets say I have an account in your LiveCycle system.  If you look in User Manager, there is an account called "Hodmi" that came from your LDAP system (or somewhere else - doesn't matter).  You also have created a process that converts 20 documents using PDFG.

If I do something that calls that process under my account, then the process is executed with the user account "Hodmi".  When the process gets to the PDFG call it will use the 3 accounts (Abe, Bob and Charlie) to call Office and convert the 20 documents using the queue system I mentioned earlier.

There is no tie in between Hodmi's LiveCycle account and the 3 system accounts.  Your process makes no reference to the 3 accounts either.  PDFG takes care of all of that for us.

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Level 1

Sir,

What you are saying is that each call to use the PDF service will go to a queue. It will use the Operating system users to work the queue. In our case we have 15 users on the operating system. If a person uses are application and tries to load 20 files to be converted. I use a livecycle process to loop through the files and convert them, once all are converted the process will use ddx to package them. Are the PDF processes released as soon as they are done with the conversion? If one of the files errors on conversion it appears that user maybe hung up until the process completes the error process, does that make sense?

V/R,

Matt Unger

DFAS-Indianapolis

phone:317-212-8703 dsn:699-8703

Technical Services Organization - Corporate Services

Development Team

Please note - My phone number has changed to (317) 212-8703. The DSN number will remain 699-8703.