Win has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Monks,
I want to go through a directory full of word files and convert them to pdf files.
What CPAN module shall I use for this? Does anyone have a bit of code for this handy? Most appreciated.


UPDATE: I found the best web site to be: http://www.pdfonline.com/easypdf/sdk/index-003.htm

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Re: CPAN code for Word conversion to pdf
by marto (Cardinal) on Jun 10, 2009 at 14:57 UTC
Re: CPAN code for Word conversion to pdf
by derby (Abbot) on Jun 10, 2009 at 17:21 UTC

    The easiest way to convert them is to use a web service like freepdfconvert. If that's not doable and the box you're doing the converting on is windows (and you have MSWord installed and the version of MSWord can save as PDF) then Win32::OLE is probably the best approach:

    ... eval { my $consts = Win32::OLE::Const->Load( "Microsoft Word" ); my $msword = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Word.Application') || Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application', 'Quit') || die "cannot get or create word: $!"; $msword->{Visible} = 0; $msword->{DisplayAlerts} = $consts->{wdAlertsNone}; $msword->Documents->OpenNoRepairDialog( $in_filename ) || die "cannot open $in_filename - ", Win32::OLE->LastError(); $msword->ActiveDocument->SaveAs( { FileName => $out_filename, FileFormat => $consts->{wdFormatPDF}, } ); $msword->ActiveDocument->Close( 0 ); }; ...
    -derby

    Update: I should have said if you're on *nix, there are other things you can do like going through OpenOffice or AntiWord but due to the nature of MSWord (or MS), using anything other than an MS approach will lead to a loss of *pixel perfection* for most documents. They may still be readable and usable but the converted document may look very different from the original.

      I use Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. Presumably this does not allow documents to be saved as pdfs. I've got 107 files to convert. I'm not sure if it is practical to do this via a web site.