PDF conversion service

Question

I need to develop a service able to convert MS Office and Open Office documents to PDF. And the PDF`s also need to be commentable when opened in ADOBE Reader.

I have used a piece of software from www.neevia.com. And it does the conversion, but is not able to make the PDF´s commentable and is therefore useless in my scenario.

Ideally I would like a piece of software that is monitoring a directory, and when a file is commited to that directory, the software detects this, fetches the file, converts it, and puts it in another directory. This way I can programmatically put the file I want converted in the IN folder and monitor the OUT folder to fetch the file when converted.

So do anyone know a piece of software capable of converting MS Office and Open Office files to commentable PDF`s?

Answer 1

You could programmatically, using office automation, print documents to a postscript printer driver to get a postscript file, then use GhostScript to convert the PS file to PDF. Not sure of the commentable features supported by Adobe Reader as opposed to the full version of Acrobat, but it should create a reasonably well supported PDF file.

Answer 2

A-PDF may do what you want, it's web site claims it can convert office docs into PDF including batch convertion with watching a folder.

Answer 3

Both Office 2007 and OpenOffice can save directly to PDF, so you could automate that process.

However, changing the "document rights" of the PDF to allow commenting is something that only Adobe Acrobat can do. (This is Adobe's way of selling more product). There are other 3rd-party tools out there that claim to be able to do it (google change pdf +"document rights"), but I can't vouch for any of them.

Answer 4

It sounds like you're after the "Extend Features In Acrobat Reader" document rights feature that's part of Acrobat Professional. If you want a programmatic way of doing it then Adobe LiveCycle is the only game in town. This is one of the features that Adobe keeps for itself and no third party is legally allowed to provide it.

Answer 5

I believe the commentable features are part of the PDF software, and not the file. Adobe Professional will allow to add comments, while the reader has less capabilities.

Answer 6

Hmmm, you can develop your own or just buy it off the shelf. My company (shameless plug) has a product that does server based PDF Conversion for common Office formats and can be invoked via a web service.

Blogged about it here. Making office work reliably on the server (32bit/64bit, Win2K3/Win2K8) is challenging to say the least.