Month: July 2023

Enhanced Printing Options: Win2PDF’s Latest Command Line Features

And in our final feature post about the 10.0.154 Win2PDF Update, we’ll look at the remaining new features.

New Command Line Support To Print Document and Image Files to a Windows Printer

Another frequently requested feature is the ability to print files directly from the command line, typically to a paper printer. There is a generalized PRINT command, along with commands used for printing specifically formatted image and document files. These are:

  • PRINT General Print command line option
  • PRINTDOCX ** Print Microsoft Word .docx files
  • PRINTRTF ** Print RichText Format .rtf files
  • PRINTODT ** Print OpenDocument Format .odt files
  • PRINTTXT ** Print Text .txt files
  • PRINTHTML Print HTML files
  • PRINTSVG Print Scalable Vector Graphic .svg files
  • PRINTXPS Print XML Paper Specification .xps files
  • PRINTTIFF Print TIFF .tif image files
  • PRINTJPG Print JPG .jpg image files
  • PRINTPNG Print PNG .png image files
  • PRINTBMP Print Bitmap .bmp image files
  • PRINTGIF Print GIF .gif image files

** feature requires Win2PDF Pro version of the software

And a couple of other new command line features were added as well:

  • PRINTPDFACTUALSIZE – used to print a PDF with no scaling
  • PRINTPDF – Added the ability to make a tray selection option from this command

And finally, two new save as types and “Configure Auto-name” file types were added — PDF Image Only – monochrome searchable (OCR PDF) and PDF Image Only – color searchable (OCR PDF).

These formats can be useful when using Auto-name search fields. Some applications, like Crystal Reports, use encoded text to prevent searching. In this case, Win2PDF’s search fields and content fields can’t be found. These two new file types help work around this issue and are worth trying if the standard Portable Document Format – Searchable (OCR PDF) file type doesn’t work.

New Win2PDF Pro TSE Feature: Run Watch Folder As A Service

Continuing our feature posts about the 10.0.154 Win2PDF Update, let’s now take a look at running the Watch Folder as a Windows Service.

Previously, the watch folder needed to be initiated by a user, and an open window needed to be running on the machine for the Watch Folder to work. Now, it can be set up as a Windows Service in the background. This feature is ONLY available in the Win2PDF Pro Terminal Server Edition (TSE) version of the software.

[Recommended: If you haven’t used the Watch Folder and Convert feature in the past, it’s recommended that you start by running the feature interactively by starting the “Watch Folder and Convert” shortcut from the Windows Start menu. This allows you to see any errors as you configure the folder and convert type options.]

When everything is working correctly when running interactively and you’re ready to run the feature as a service, you should close the interactive Watch Folder window. Next, right click on the “Watch Folder and Convert” shortcut from the Windows Start menu, and choose “Run As Administrator…“.

The title of the window will display “Service Config: Watch Folder and Convert“, and this is where you can select your watch folder and conversion format. The last used settings are restored in this Window.

When you click on the Save Config button, Win2PDF installs and starts a Windows service using the settings in this window. The service will automatically start with Windows, and does not require that anyone is logged in to the server. You can verify the service is running by viewing the Services window from the Windows control panel.

The service runs under the local system account by default. If the “Convert files from” or “Save To Folders” are not accessible from the local system account, you can configure the service to run under a different user using the “Log on” tab of the “Services” applet in the Control Panel Administrative Tools.

If you want to try this feature please request a 30-day evaluation license. Make sure to include that you need this specific feature in your request so we can send you the Win2PDF Pro TSE evaluation version.

New Win2PDF Pro Features: Batch Convert To A Single PDF File

In our previous blog post announcing the 10.0.154 Win2PDF Update, we mentioned a couple of new features that are specific to Win2PDF Pro. Let’s take a closer look at the first.

Batch Convert to a Single Merged PDF File

Previously, the batch convert feature in Win2PDF Desktop converted a folder of files in one format to another folder with a different format. If you had 10 .JPG files, for example, you could create 10 PDF files with batch convert.

However, suppose you had a folder of image files that were scanned pages of a book or document and you wanted to convert them all into a single PDF file, and one that had searchable text?

That’s where the new feature comes in. To use it, you just need to open the Win2PDF Desktop app and choose Batch Convert…

Select the folder that has your original files (Convert Files From). These can be PDF files, image files, or documents in various formats. And select the output folder (Save To Folder), and then choose the Save Type to be “Merged File…” When any of the “Merged File…” options are selected, you will be able to input a Merged File Name for the resulting file.

In our example, we’ll convert a folder of seven .PNG image files (each representing a scanned survey result), and store the results in as a Searchable (OCR) PDF file named ‘Survey Results.pdf’. Note: Any type of PDF output format can be used, but the OCR feature will make sure the results are searchable.

Notice that there are several Merged File options, which allows you to control the order in which the files are merged together. They can be sorted by alphabetical order (based on the original filename), or based on the time the original files were created or modified. When you press the Convert button, you’ll see the following pop-up.

And that’s really all there is to it. In this case, the seven individual image files (pages) in one folder have been saved to a single PDF file, and one that is searchable.

The Win2PDF BATCHCONVERT command line has also been updated to support merging to a single PDF.

Batch Merge PDFs To A Single PDF

In addition to batch converting between formats, you can also batch merge folders of existing PDF files to a single merged PDF. You aren’t limited to only converting between files types, you can also merge multiple PDF files together.

It operates in the same way by opening the “Batch Convert…” window and then choosing a folder of PDF files as the input. Again, you can choose the order of merging based on the file names, or the dates of creation or modification of the files.

You can also combine multiple PDFs into a single merged PDF from the command line using the BATCHCONVERT command.

This has been a frequently requested feature. In prior releases, Win2PDF could only append one file at a time, and we’ve had many customers wanting to merge multiple PDFs together in a single operation. Now you can with one click!

If you want to try this feature please request a 30-day evaluation license for Win2PDF Pro.

Win2PDF Update Adds New Features for Batch Converting, Watch Folders, and Command Line Printing

The newest release of Win2PDF 10.0.154 is now available on the Win2PDF Download site.

New features in this update include the following.

For Win2PDF Pro only:

For Win2PDF Pro Terminal Server Edition (TSE) only:

For all versions of the Win2PDF command line:

  • Added a tray selection option to the command line PRINTPDF command.

For all versions of Win2PDF:

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This Win2PDF 10 update is a free upgrade for Win2PDF 7 and Win2PDF 10 users. If you would like to evaluate one of the new Win2PDF Pro features (PDF watermark, PDF security, batch-convert, auto-rename, or watch folder), contact us for a free 30 day trial of Win2PDF Pro.

We’ll be providing a more detailed look at these new features in the subsequent blog posts.