Convert Microsoft Office Documents to PDF

If you have Acrobat 6 and Microsoft Word, you can use Acrobat's preconfigured Open All batch sequence to convert Word documents into PDFs hands-free. As the name suggests, you actually can use the Open All batch sequence on any kind of file that Acrobat knows how to handle, including bitmap and PostScript files. Acrobat 5 also has an Open All batch sequence, but it does not handle as many file types as Acrobat 6 does.

To merge a number of Word documents into a single PDF with Acrobat 6, use the File Create PDF From Multiple Files . . . feature instead.

First, you must configure Acrobat 6 to create the kind of PDF you desire. Do this using the Acrobat preferences, located at Edit > Preferences > General . . . > Convert to PDF. Select Microsoft Office and click Settings . . . , and a dialog opens.

In Acrobat 6, start the Open All batch sequence by selecting Advanced > Batch > Processing . . . Open All and clicking Run Sequence. In Acrobat 5, start the Open All batch sequence by selecting File Batch Processing Open All. Click OK to close the confirmation dialog (if necessary), and a file selector will open. Change Files of Type to All Files, select one or more input files, and then click Select. Acrobat will create one PDF for each input document. Acrobat 5 can't process Word documents this way, but it can handle bitmap images.

Refry a Folder Full of PDFs (Acrobat 6 Pro)

Before publishing a PDF online for wide distribution, you should try reducing its file size by refrying it . With Acrobat 6, you can refry a PDF using its Optimizer feature (Advanced PDF Optimizer . . . ). Let's create an Acrobat 6 batch sequence that applies the Optimizer to an entire folder of PDF documents. While we're at it, we can also add metadata or other finishing touches .

Create a batch sequence in Acrobat 6 Professional by selecting Advanced Batch Processing . . . and clicking New Sequence . . . . Name the new sequence Refry and click OK. The Batch Edit Sequence dialog will open.

If you want to also add metadata (title, subject, author, or keywords) to the PDFs, click Select Commands . . . and the Edit Sequence dialog will open. Select the Description command from the list on the left and click Add. In the right column, double-click this command and a dialog opens where you can set the metadata values. Click OK to close the Edit Sequence dialog and to return to the Batch Edit Sequence dialog.

Fine-tune a batch sequence using the Execute JavaScript batch command. If JavaScript is not powerful enough, you can develop your own batch processing commands using an Acrobat plug-in. See the BatchCommand and BatchMetadata plug-in samples that come with the Acrobat SDK.

Set Run Commands On to Ask When Sequence is Run. Set Select Output Location to Same Folder as Original(s). Click Output Options . . . .

On the Output Options dialog, select Add to Original Base Name(s) and then set Insert After to .opt. Under Output Format, set Save File As to Adobe PDF Files. Place checkmarks next to Fast Web View and PDF Optimizer. Click Settings . . . to configure the Optimizer.

Configure the Optimizer to suit your requirements. Set its compatibility to Acrobat 5.0 and Later or Acrobat 4.0 and Later for maximum PDF portability. Click OK when you're done.

Click OK to close the Output Options dialog. Click OK to close the Batch Edit Sequence dialog. Your new Refry batch sequence now should be visible in the Batch Sequences dialog.

To make a batch sequence recurse into subfolders, set Run Commands On to Selected Folder. Then click Browse . . . to select the folder you want to process. Whenever you run the sequence, it will process that same folder (and its subfolders).

Test your batch sequence on a temporary folder of disposable PDFs. In the Batch Sequences dialog, select Refry and click Run Sequence. Click OK on the Confirmation dialog. A file selector will open. Select one or more PDFs and click Select to continue. Acrobat will create new PDFs based on your Optimizer settings. The new PDFs will have the same filenames as the original PDFs, except they will have .opt.pdf instead of .pdf at the end. When Acrobat is done, check the new PDFs to make sure the results are satisfactory.

Disable the batch processing confirmation dialog using the Acrobat preferences: Edit>Preferences>General . . . Batch Processing.

Converting folders of Word documents to PDF.

If you have a folder of PDFs that you must alter or convert, consider using Acrobat's built-in batch processing feature. After you create a batch sequence, you can use it to process large quantities of PDFs hands-free. You can also apply a batch sequence to a single PDF, which means you can create batch sequences for use as macros.

Acrobat batch processing isn't just for manipulating PDF. You can use it to convert Microsoft Office documents, PostScript files, or graphic bitmaps into PDF documents. Or, use batch processing to convert PDF documents to HTML, PostScript, RTF, text, or graphic bitmaps. Many of these options are not available in Acrobat 5. In Acrobat 6, you can also apply OCR to bitmaps or refry PDFs to prepare them for online distribution.

You can automate many of the basic things you do in Acrobat with batch processing. We'll describe a couple of examples.