7.6

Microsoft® Word® Documents To PDF Conversion
The Microsoft® Word® to PDFAction Task can be used to convert a Word® document into a PDFfile that can be used in your
PlanetPress Suite Workflow Tools process. It can also do a Mail Merge as it runs the task.
This plugin is only available with PlanetPress Production (and not with PlanetPress Office or PlanetPress Watch).
Microsoft® Word® needs to be installed for this task to be functional and to test the connection.
Input
Acompatible MicrosoftWord Document (see notes).
Processing
The Word document is converted into a PDFfile. If a Mail Merge is made, the mail merge is done in the document before the
document is converted into a PDFfile. The conversion is done through the use of a printer queue - the document is printed to
this queue and the print job is converted to PDF. This is the same technique used in the WinQueue Input when generating
PDFfiles.
Output
One of:
l By default, aPDFfile accompanied with basic PDFmetadata. The Metadata contains one "Document" level, and one
data page (and page)level for each PDFpage generated by the document. When Mail Merge is not selected, this is the
only available choice.
l A DOC(Word Document)file which is the result of the mail merge. This output is only available when doing a mail
merge.
Task Properties
General tab
l Microsoft Word Document: Enter a Microsoft® Word® document or template, or click the browse button to navi-
gate to the location of the document. The supported extensions are: *.doc, *.docx, *.dot and *.dotx.
l Perform Mail Merge: Check when providing a Microsoft® Word® document or template configured for mail merge.
l Use settings specified in document: Selected to instruct the task to use the connection string and SQL
statements stored in the DOC file. There is no guarantee that the database, connection string or statement are
still valid, especially if the DOC file was moved or sent to someone else.
l Use custom settings: Override the mail merge settings in the Microsoft® Word® document and lets you
specify your own.
l Connection String: The connection string to any ODBCdatabase supported by PlanetPress Suite. You can
use the Browse button to open an existing File DSN, or use the Database Button to open the ODBCconnection
interface.
l SQL Statement:An SQLstatement that is understood by the database you are using and that will return a
series of records that the Microsoft® Word® template is expecting. Note that no validation is made on
SQLstatements except if they are for Microsoft Access and Excel data files. You can use the Test Connection but-
ton to test the SQLand connection string.
l Test connection: Checks if the Connection String and SQLStatement are valid, and if the resulting recordset
is understood by the Microsoft® Word® document. This is optional, though highly recommended.