1. Rick Domogalik
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. Friday, 12 July 2019 17:26 PM UTC

I had an earlier post about creating a PDF Portfolio, but have come full circle with the scope of the project and realize I am struggling with determining a good starting place and method for some basic PDF manipulation with PowerBuilder.  

I am looking for some guidance on a good way to implement this project.  It might be best to layout the scope of the project and ask if anyone has suggestions on the best way and 3rd party applications to use to accomplish this.

Scope:  Create an application that will allow users to navigate through a list of Windows File system folders.  Each of these folders will contain various documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Email, PDF, etc.).  The user will be able to select documents from the selected folder and then provide an output filename and location.  The output file will convert all documents selected into PDF's, then combine all those PDF's into one PDF file.

I have all the code working up to the point where I need to covert the random file types into PDF.  I also have a working installation of PDFTK that will combine all the PDF files into one large file and place in the desired location.

My roadblock is the conversion of the random file types into PDF's so I can join them.  I have tried to implement Amyuni's PDF convertor.  I can get it to work with existing PDF files, but don't seem to be able to get it to open other file types and convert to PDF.  I think I have landed on the fact that the software is only for working with existing PDF files and not other formats.  

This is where I could use the guidance.  Can this be done with Amyuni's external functions?  I just can't seem to find good documentation for a PowerBuilder implementation using Amyuni.  There are several DLL's I have tried working with and just keep hitting a wall on understanding which methods to use or if it is even the correct action to be taking.

 

Any insight or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Rick

Miguel Leeuwe Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Monday, 15 July 2019 10:08 AM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 1

We use syncfusion to merge pdf's together. Though the install to just get the required DLLs, requires you to install a full suite, this part of pdf-merge of syncfusion is free, also for commercial use. I'm not sure about other PDF functionality, but I guess is it's also free?

 

I've not done it myself, but it seems to be easy to convert excel or word into pdf's:

https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/xlsio/excel-to-pdf-conversion

https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/docio/word-to-pdf

 

Like Olan already said, maybe the easiest way would be to use Word or Excel itself to first do the conversion. (only if you have Office of course).

HTH

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Olan Knight Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Friday, 12 July 2019 22:57 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 2

I've never done this, but in my experience in order to convert an specific type of document, like a Microsoft Word document, you must open the document using their own toolset, in this case using MS Word. THEN you can save the document as a PDF is that's one of the SAVE AS capabilities of the tool.

However....
A quick Google search for "convert any document to pdf" lists Adobe Acrobat, and several tools that fall into thePDF CONVERTER category, which might prove to be useful to you.
https://www.freepdfconvert.com/
https://www.sodapdf.com/pdf-converter/
https://smallpdf.com/pdf-converter
https://topdf.com/
.

.

. and many more. Surely one or more of them has a product they'd LOVE to sell you!  :)



Good Luck,

Olan

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John Fauss Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Friday, 12 July 2019 20:36 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 3

Rick - You didn't mention how the "source" files (.docx, .xlsx, etc.) are created and maintained. Do they change often or do they never change? Are changes to the source files performed by people or is it automated?

It might be simpler to require each source file to saved as a PDF in addition to the native source file format. That way you help to guarantee faithful rendering/conversion to PDF instead of relying on one or more utilities that may not faithfully create the PDF's.

Interesting challenge. Good luck!

 

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Roland Smith Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Friday, 12 July 2019 18:52 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 4

My Amyuni example:

http://www.topwizprogramming.com/freecode_amyuni.html

Amyuni Docs:

https://www.amyuni.com/WebHelp/Developer_Documentation.htm

My example has a function of_ConcatenateFiles but the files have to be PDF. You'd need some other tool to convert the other files to PDF. Amyuni has a function to turn PDF to Excel or Word but not the other way around.

 

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