Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

This Forum is for the use of End Users requiring help and assistance for Tracker Software's OFFice2PDF and MS Office Addin Applications - supplied with PDF-XChange.

Moderators: TrackerSupp-Daniel, Tracker Support, Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team, Chris - Tracker Supp, Sean - Tracker, Tracker Supp-Stefan

Post Reply
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

I'm running the latest version of PDF-Xchange Pro and Word 2010 (32 bits) on Windows 7 (64 bits).

I'm using a third application to send content to Word for layout and publishing to PDF via the Word 2010 build-in PDF feature. Unfortunately this feature produces buggy PDF in Linux environments.

I can configure my third application to publish to Word, however, then launch a macro in my Word template to publish from Word to PDF-Xchange.

Is there a Word macro available for PDF-Xchange that could accomplish this?
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17824
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello rkg82,

I believe you should be able to script word to "Print" to our printing drivers and that will result in a proper PDF, but any links will be lost. I do not believe there is a way for you to call our Word add-in from external code however.

An alternative solution is to use our Office2PDF Tools. Just set up a watched folder, and make your third party product publish to .doc/.docx and store the resulting doc/docx files in the watched folder. Then our Office2PDF will take these files and convert them to PDFs.

Best,
Stefan
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

The watched folder feature is interesting, but is it possible to watch subfolders recursively?
Can I call and run the tool from the command line?
Can the watched folder be designated as a command-line argument?
User avatar
John - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 5219
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 10:34 am
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by John - Tracker Supp »

I am afraid command line options are not possible - this is intentional so as to ensure licensing is on a per user basis and scripts are not created on a server etc to bypass these - if you wish to generate such functionality we provide a toolkit for developer's to do so and this ius reasonabley priced and relativley easy to use for an experienced developer ...
If posting files to this forum - you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded - thank you.

Best regards
Tracker Support
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

That's fair enough.
What about recursive conversion through subfolders, though? I'm assuming this is not currently possible, but it certainly would be a useful feature to have, at least for me.
User avatar
John - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 5219
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 10:34 am
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by John - Tracker Supp »

We can certainly look into this - the biggest issue for us at this time is all of our development resources are committed at this time to completion of the Editor and Developer SDK version updates in progress now - so its likely to be 2 -3 months before we can look into this further I am afraid.
If posting files to this forum - you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded - thank you.

Best regards
Tracker Support
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

Sounds reasonable. Looking forward to the new Editor features as well.
User avatar
Paul - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6833
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:37 pm
Location: Chemainus, Canada
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

:)
Best regards

Paul O'Rorke
Tracker Support North America
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

Another suggestion for a possible future enhancement of Office2PDF functionality. We need to specify about 10 different network folders to watch. The folders all have nearly identical pathnames, except for the next to last one, as in this example:

\\idefix\twt_doc\2.9.0\kbpFN_TI\PDF
\\idefix\twt_doc\2.9.0\kbpFN_Std\PDF
\\idefix\twt_doc\2.9.0\kbpFN_REN\PDF
\\idefix\twt_doc\2.9.0\kbpFN_QCT\PDF
\\idefix\twt_doc\2.9.0\kbpFN_NHWD\PDF
\\idefix\twt_doc\2.9.0\kbpFN_Intel\PDF
... etc.

Currently this is slow and laborious because the "Browse for folder" dialog forces you to parse the entire network each time, comprising in our case about 50 computers. It would be far easier to be able to paste the path, as is possible in certain other Windows API "browse" dialogs, although not the basic one you have implemented. It would be nice to be able to edit the path, too, and perhaps save the entire configuration to a file, to avoid having to do this over again every time we publish different documentation sets, which we sometimes do several time a day.

Of course being able to convert in sub-folders recursively would solve this, but we would nevertheless want the option to paste pathnames, and edit them subsequently, to handle special cases.

Postscript: Have found since this post was submitted that the tool stores the watched directory paths in a plain text file, found, in our case, in one of two places:
C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF-XChange 5\folders.wch
C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Roaming\Tracker Software\Office2PDF5\folders.wch
This file can be edited, thus avoiding the limitations of the "Browse for folder" dialog.
Last edited by rkg82 on Wed Oct 02, 2013 5:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
John - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 5219
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 10:34 am
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by John - Tracker Supp »

Thanks - we will see what can be done in the future.
If posting files to this forum - you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded - thank you.

Best regards
Tracker Support
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

Feature request:
The ability to have the tool parse all Word "table of contents" links and cross references, and convert them to clickable links in the PDF.
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi rkg82,

Thanks for the post - this should already be present in the V5 add-in. If you click the "Settings" button, under the PDF-XChange 2012 tab in, e.g. Word, then go to "Links", you should see the option to generate the links (see attached).
Add-in.zip
(12.6 KiB) Downloaded 256 times
However, this will only work if there is already a clickable table of contents in the document.

Cheers, hope that helps!
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

The problem is not with the PDF-Xchange add-in to Word, but with the stand-alone batch conversion tool "OFFice2PDF 2012" the most recent version of which definitely does not pick up the clickable links in Word tables of contents and cross-references: only http Internet links are active in the PDF. I can obtain the desired result when running the PDF-Xchange add in from Word, but not when running the batch conversions tool on exactly the same Word file.

The batch tool does not have the same options: see attached screen shot.
Attachments
Office2PDFOptionsSettings.zip
(37.56 KiB) Downloaded 229 times
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi rkg82,

Office2PDF isn't able to do this, as it uses the Driver for conversion, rather than the Add-in. The new version of Office2PDF, which should be available soon, should be able to do this.

For now, I'm afraid that your only option would be to use the Add-in.

Cheers, hope that helps!
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

Well, glad to hear there is a new version of Office2PDF on its way. Presumably it's too late to request a couple of new features, but here it is:

We use Office2PDF in a Windows command line batch process that publishes database content to a Word document. The process then moves the Word document to a watched folder, launches Office2PDF to convert the Word doc, then the process moves the PDF and Word files out of the folder, and the batch starts the next iteration.

We cannot leave Office2PDF running between iterations, however, and because there appears to be no way to script a DOS shell command to shut down a running application cleanly, we have to close the Office2PDF dialog manually at each iteration. A user-defined timeout setting in Office2PDF that closes the tool after a period of no activity in watched folders would make it possible to automate the entire process from start to finish.

Among more minor improvements we would like to see:

1) Significantly reduce the width of the "cursor sensitive" zone for each of the three options at the bottom of the Options dialog, to avoid activating or deactivating an option by accidentally clicking the cursor on the right edge of the dialog box. This happens quite easily when you've got several windows open in the background that you want to bring forward by clicking on them, and the pointer just happens to touch the Office2PDF dialog along the edge at the wrong moment. In fact, get rid of the zone entirely, and just use the check mark widget. Much safer.

2) Open directly from the Office2PDF dialog box the plain text file that stores the watched directory paths, so that it can be edited, instead of painfully having to wait for the Windows "Open" dialog to scan and rescan the network each time you want to add a folder, would be a real time-saver.

3) Add a "recursive" option to the watch folder declaration, perhaps with a user-defined level of depth, would save much time spent building up a list of folder paths by hand, either with the dialog box, or even in the plain text file mentioned in the previous point.
Last edited by rkg82 on Wed Oct 02, 2013 6:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi rkg82,

It's never too late to request a feature :wink: well, unless it's an older version.

I don't know if it's possible to implement these requests, off-hand, but I'll talk to the Dev. Team and will put in a request if they find them feasible. I should warn you, that this is likely to be a long-term request, as the vast majority of Development has been shifted to the Editor, for the time being, in order to get it out and avaialbe for sale.

Cheers - will post back when I have more info.
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

I understand that there are priorities.

Since you mentioned the subject of the Editor, one feature that it is missing, and which forces us to use Acrobat Pro, is the ability to build an Acrobat compatible, stand-alone PDF index file for PDFs found in a set of folders and subfolders, preferably with a "search folders recursively" option. The Acrobat feature is limited in that it cannot be scripted and launched from the command line, however. Having such a feature in your editor, and being able to launch it from the command line would be a great improvement.
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

I'll pitch that to the Dev. Team at the same time, as I seem to remember a similar request but am not sure of the status of it, at the moment.

Cheers,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi rkg82,

I've created out two separate tickets for these requests, but please note that they do not necessarily guarantee that the features will be implemented - though we will certainly do our best.

I should also warn you, that making the PDF Index files Adobe compatible may be an issue - the specification for doing this has not been published by Adobe and therefore makes it extremely difficult, if not outright impossible (for the time being) to make these files compatible. Obviously, we will still do our best.

The ticket numbers respectively are RT-2021 and RT-2022 (the latter being the ticket for the PDF Indexes).

Cheers, hope that helps!
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
rkg82
User
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by rkg82 »

Thanks for considering them. I understand they may not be implemented. Just wanted to have the ideas registered somewhere in case dev. resources become available.
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17824
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Word 2010 Macro to call PDFXchange driver

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

:)
Post Reply