I’ve just published the first release for a CodePlex project I started to provide sample projects / solutions for using the Word Automation Services in SharePoint 2010.
Word Automation Services allow you to convert document to and from different formats.
File formats the service can read:
- Office Open XML (DOCX, DOCM, DOTX, DOTM)
- Word 97-2003 Document (DOC) and Word 97-2003 Template (DOT)
- Rich Text Format (RTF)
- Single File Web Page (MHTML)
- HTML
- Word 2003 XML
- Word 2007/2010 XML
File formats the service can write:
- XPS
- Office Open XML (DOCX, DOCM)
- Word 97-2003 Document (DOC)
- Rich Text Format (RTF)
- Single File Web Page (MHTML)
- Word 2007/2010 XML
(source)
As far as I’ve found out, there are no UI features available out-of-the-box to use these services, so I’ve decided to create some. The first one is a custom workflow action you can use in SharePoint Designer to convert a document to many of the supported
formats.
In the workflow designer you can add the “Convert Document” action:
The action is inserted into the workflow step where you can specify the url of the output file, select the output format and save options and select a variable for storing the conversion job id (which you can use later to retrieve the status, as the job runs asynchronous):
The job id is also logged into the Workflo w History Log (the second entry is from a second workflow action that logs the returned conversion job id variable):
After the job has run, which can take up to a few minutes (depending on the word automation services settings), the converted document appears in the library:
The custom workflow action is one of the first features for Word Automation in SharePoint 2010 I’ve planned to release. Other features will be a Ribbon and Item context menu extension and more Workflow actions.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement or other functionality you would like to see.
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2 Comments
hi peter,
Nice artcile and great solution.
I’m using your sharepoint solutions to convert documents to pdf through workflow. I have created the workflow with convert document action and added output document url but its not working. please help how to set the appropirate output document url with examples.
You will need to use the full url to the outputfile.
The workflow action will simply call the following method:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.word.server.conversions.conversionjob.addfile.aspx