Microsoft word to PDF/HTML Converter

Developing a content management System, I came across this requirement where the uploaded word docs needs to be converted to PDF at server, saved and later on be available for display on the browser.


This is a clean approach as the content of the pages can change once in a while and there’s no point in making the content static and then reinventing the wheel when the content changes.

The application uploads the word documents to the server, which are saved as PDF and become a part of the dynamic menu that contains the link if the document has been uploaded to the server. Now whenever the content of the uploaded files changes, the changed files can be uploaded to the server again and the modified content is available to the user.

One of the pre-requisites for this functionality to work is the availability of save-as pdf template to be available in MS-Word 2007.

If it is not available, it can be downloaded from here.

I’ll not go into creation of dynamic menu and all other stuff, I’ll just explain how the “. Docx” to “.pdf” conversion works.

Here is the Code for the conversion.

public static string ConvertDocument(string filePath, string folder_to_save_in,string FileName)


{

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ApplicationClass wordApplication = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ApplicationClass();

string newfilename = string.Empty;

try

{

// set up a Word Application...

// Opening a Word doc

object o_nullobject = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;

object o_filePath = filePath;

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document doc = wordApplication.Documents.Open(ref o_filePath,

ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject,

ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject,

ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject);

// save The Doc in html/pdf format format...

//string newfilename = folder_to_save_in + @"\"+FileName.Replace(".docx", ".html");

newfilename = folder_to_save_in + @"\" + FileName.Replace(".docx", ".pdf");

object o_newfilename = newfilename;

//object o_format = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdSaveFormat.wdFormatHTML;

object o_format = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdSaveFormat.wdFormatPDF;

object o_encoding = null;

object o_endings = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdLineEndingType.wdCRLF;

wordApplication.ActiveDocument.SaveAs(ref o_newfilename, ref o_format, ref o_nullobject,

ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject,

ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_encoding, ref o_nullobject,

ref o_nullobject, ref o_endings, ref o_nullobject);

// close the original doc ...

doc.Close(ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject, ref o_nullobject);

}

catch (Exception ex)

{


}

finally

{

}

return newfilename;

}
 
For this Code to work , you need to add a reference to Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word dll(in Vs-2008, there will be two versions verion 11.0 and version 12.0. This code uses 12.0).


The code works by creating an instance of word application, then opening the the document specied in the “filepath” parameter and the finally saving it in the “folder_to_save_in” folder.

WdSaveFormat enum has a number of options (the same that you get while using save as functionality of the MS-Word), so the document can be saves as HTML also.

This code  returns a strin that would be the location where the document is saved as the requirement was to update an XML file.Please make necessary modifications as required.
Hope this was Helpful,

Till Next we connect…..

Happy Coding!