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Developing with SharePoint 2010 Word Automation Services

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There are some tasks that are difficult using the Open XML SDK, such as repagination, conversion to other document formats such as PDF, or updating of the table of contents, fields, and other dynamic content in documents.  Word Automation Services is a new feature of SharePoint 2010 that can help in these scenarios.  It is a shared service that provides unattended, server-side conversion of documents into other formats, as well as some other essential pieces of functionality.  It was designed from the outset to work on servers, and can process high volumes of documents in a reliable and predictable fashion.

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Blog TOCI've co-authored a paper, Developing with SharePoint 2010 Word Automation Services, which is published on MSDN.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2010
    As always, great post Eric! Thanks! Thanks, Raja, it was fun to write! -Eric

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2010
    Awesome feature! Does it require certain Office / SharePoint Server (i.e. Enterprise) installations at all? I suppose this is not available in SharePoint Foundation? Greetz. Markus

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2010
    Hi Markus, The feature is not available in SharePoint foundation.  It is part of the standard and enterprise CALs of SharePoint Server. -Eric

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2010
    Eric, thank you for this great post! David

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2010
    Hi Eric, Thanks for the detailed instruction! Just to add my two cents: If you get an SPException when starting the job (job.Start()) that says "There are no online service instances for this application." then you should check if the Word Automation Services service is running (Central Administration / System Settings / Manage services on server). Peter

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2010
    Hii Eric, Very Nice post, but i would like to know is it possible to update metadata when we convert doc to pdf. Because we do have Doc with metadata. i tried to comvert it works fine but i have to update metadata( custom column i addded in doc library) manually.

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2010
    Hi Deep, From the product team: There is no eventing model, so there’s no way to do this perfectly; however you could have a workflow that converts, then has a delay activity that checks for the convert to finish and does post-processing, though, as a workaround. -Eric

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2010
    Hii Eric, Thanks for your respond. you are right i have to use workflow to update metadata after convert..

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2010
    Hii Eric, We can solve this problem by using Document Set feature of sharepoint 2010. We can manage multiple documents in single document set.

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2010
    Hi, Your article was very useful to create a conversion workflow. But I have a problem if the PDF already exist. I've got an error during upload saying that I must check out my destination file before modify it. This is strange because I have change setting with job.Settings.OutputSaveBehavior = SaveBehavior.AppendIfPossible; Do you have any idea ? Mathieu

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2010
    Hii Eric, How to resolve error " File Containts Corrupted Data " . How to check word file has corrupted data ?

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2010
    Hii Eric, How to resolve error " File Containts Corrupted Data " . How to check word file has corrupted data ?

  • Anonymous
    June 28, 2010
    Hii, Your article is very useful for all. it works fine for me for convert doc to pdf. But i need to know this service can useful for add header and footer on document of word 2003 ( Binary file) . I tried open xml to add header and footer programatically. it works fine for word 2007 and 2010. but it does not support with word 2003. I will be very happy if you give some suggetion.. Thank You

  • Anonymous
    June 28, 2010
    Hi Sandip, One possible approach - programmatically convert from word 2003 to Open XML, then add headers and footers, and then convert back to 2003.

  • Anonymous
    June 30, 2010
    Thank You Eric, I like your concept. But i did not do anything like that but i will try. Do you have something about it?? I appreciate for respond..

  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2010
    The comment has been removed