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.