Print Conductor + PDFCreator – mass convert files to pdf

This hack is useful when you wish to mass convert many documents (doc, excel, txt, etc) into pdf. Why would we want to do this is covered by Shockw@ve in his article at Spherebox, but I’m sure you all have your own reasons. What this does actually is use Print Conductor to take advantage of the virtual postscript printer installed by all pdf creating applications to print-out pdf files.

Ingredients
Print Conductor
My past article about Print Conductor which enables you to print many files without the need to open them. Download from here.

PDFCreator
While there are many PDF creator programs available. I’m using this simply because it’s the one deployed in my company. Download from here. It should work with all other PDF creating applications like PrimoPDF, novaPDF, et cetera.

1) Download and install application. Launch Print Conductor and select the files you want to ‘print to pdf’.

2) Make sure your file names are appropriately named and to stop PDFCreator from prompting you with the ‘Save-As’ dialog box for each document you convert, make sure that Auto-Save is turned-on in the preference.

3) Select your postscript virtual PDF printer from the printer list.

4) If you should convert many files at once, you’d notice that the Print Conductor will look like it gets cranky, but that’s should just be the printer spooler in the background. You should be able to get back control once that task has ended. Excel’s ‘always-present-save-changes-even-though-no-changes-are-made’ are also the cause for concern.

samurai1337 notes that on pdf995, it loads an advertisment everytime you print.