Using Microsoft Office to convert file formats to PDF

The Generate PDF service’s CreatePDF2 operation can use the following Microsoft Office applications to convert Microsoft Office file formats to PDF:

  • Office Word (DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT)

    Note: If the native applications that support these file formats have size-related constraints, ensure that the files in these formats are within the size restrictions. For more information on Office Word-related constraints, see the Microsoft Support article on Operating parameter limitations and specifications in Word.

  • Office Excel (XLS, XLSX)

  • Office PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX)

  • Office Visio (VSD)

  • Project (MPP)

  • Office Publisher (PUB)

  • Office Document Writer (XPS) (Windows only)

File type settings specify how each type of Microsoft Office file format is converted to PDF. Here are examples of those settings:

  • Excel settings include fitting worksheets to a single page and running macros automatically.

  • PowerPoint settings include converting footnote and endnote link, and converting displayed comments to notes in PDF.

  • AutoCAD settings include flattening layers in PDF and creating PDF/E-1 compliance.

Here are examples of settings that apply to Microsoft Office applications:

  • Option of using OpenOffice as a fallback converter. If the Generate PDF service cannot successfully convert the file using the corresponding Microsoft Office application, it converts the file using OpenOffice.

  • Conversion to PDF/A-1b or PDF/A-2b compliance.

The Generate PDF service can use multiple instances of Microsoft Office to convert Microsoft Office files. This capability is called multi-threaded conversion. Compared to using a single instance of Microsoft Office applications, multi-threaded conversion can significantly increase the rate at which this service converts Microsoft files. Support for multi-threaded conversion using Microsoft Office requires the post-installation setup tasks described in Installing and Deploying LiveCycle Using JBoss Turnkey.

Note: The Generate PDF service does not support multi-threaded conversion using Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Visio, or Microsoft Project. This constraint is caused by limitations in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Project.

Support for fallback conversion is available even when multi-threaded conversion is enabled. If fallback conversion is enabled, the Generate PDF service uses OpenOffice to convert Microsoft Office files. If OpenOffice fails, the Generate PDF service uses PDFMaker to convert those files.

Note: When the Generate PDF service uses Microsoft Office 2003 on a 64-bit operating system to convert native files, that service cannot successfully use PDFMaker for fallback conversion.

// Ethnio survey code removed