Word → PDF

Location on ribbon: Tab DVD Addin → Group File and Print → Menu PDF / OCR

Command ID: btnWordtoPDF

What it does

Converts many Word documents to PDF in one pass, preserving formatting, straight from Excel. The add-in starts a hidden Microsoft Word session, opens each document read-only and exports it to a PDF with the same name in the same folder.

This is the submission workflow: dozens of inspection records, submittals and request-for-inspection forms written in Word all have to be handed over as PDF. Instead of opening each file and doing Save As PDF, you select them all once.

How to use

1. Go to tab DVD Addin → group File and Print → menu PDF / OCR → click Word → PDF.
2. The "Pick Word documents" dialog opens, filtered to *.doc; *.docx.
3. Select multiple files at once (Ctrl for individual picks, Shift for a range, Ctrl+A for everything) → Open.
4. The add-in launches Word invisibly, opens each file read-only and exports a PDF with the same name, in the same folder as the Word file.
5. When it finishes, the hidden Word session is closed and a message reports the result, e.g. "Converted 18/20 Word files to PDF."

Example

Folder D:\Records\InspectionRecords holds 20 .docx inspection records for level-5 blockwork and plastering.

Run the command, select all 20 → about a minute later each .docx has a matching .pdf beside it. Then use PDF Manager to merge the 20 PDFs into one dossier in index order.

Notes

• Microsoft Word must be installed; otherwise the command reports "Microsoft Word is not installed." and stops.
• PDFs are written next to the source document with the same name; an existing PDF of that name is overwritten without asking.
• Files that fail (corrupt, locked, password-protected on open) are simply skipped — the final count tells you how many of the total succeeded.
• Word runs hidden while the batch executes — do not kill the Word process manually mid-run.
• Close any open Word documents beforehand to avoid file-lock conflicts.
• The output follows the page setup of each Word document (paper size, margins, headers and footers).

Related

• Visio → PDF — the same idea for Visio drawings.
• PDF Manager — merge the resulting PDFs into a single dossier.
• Selected Sheets to PDF — produce PDFs from Excel sheets instead.
• Merge Word — generate Word documents from Excel data, then convert them here.