Printing office documents to the tiff printer as a background task

[Eric Dan]

The regular Scenario:
Converting office documents (Word, Excel, Outlook emails etc.) to tiff files.

Possible solution:
Using the "Microsoft office document image writer" – the virtual tiff
printer. This is a good solution for doing the task interactively.

The more complicated scenario:
Doing the same task as above (converting office documents to tiff files) but
in a background service.

The problems:
1. Microsoft warns from using office automation within a service (even if
the service runs with the credentials of a real user with a profile.
2. Some printing methods of office automation (like in Outlook
MailItem.PrintOut) do not enable passing parameters to control the printing
and it becomes a big problem when printing to the virtual tiff printer
because a tiff file name must be supplied interactively.

Question:
What is the recommended way to achive the task of converting Office
documents to tiff file in a background (non interactive task)?

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Eric,

You may want to post this in the Office Developer newsgroup
(link below) and include specifics on your automation approach
and programming language.

======
The regular Scenario:
Converting office documents (Word, Excel, Outlook emails etc.) to tiff files.

Possible solution:
Using the "Microsoft office document image writer" - the virtual tiff
printer. This is a good solution for doing the task interactively.

The more complicated scenario:
Doing the same task as above (converting office documents to tiff files) but
in a background service.

The problems:
1. Microsoft warns from using office automation within a service (even if
the service runs with the credentials of a real user with a profile.
2. Some printing methods of office automation (like in Outlook
MailItem.PrintOut) do not enable passing parameters to control the printing
and it becomes a big problem when printing to the virtual tiff printer
because a tiff file name must be supplied interactively.

Question:
What is the recommended way to achive the task of converting Office
documents to tiff file in a background (non interactive task)?

--
Thanks
Eric>>
--
LLet us know if this has helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP
*courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends8

A. Specific newsgroup/discussion group mentioned in this message:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.officedev
or via browser:
http://microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/?dg=microsoft.public.officedev

B. MS Office Community discussion/newsgroups via Web Browser
http://microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx
or
Microsoft hosted newsgroups via Outlook Express/newsreader
news://msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Eric Dan]

Yes, I have posted the question there too.

You may assume .NET/C# or C++/COM in case the first one is not possible.
Anyway, we didn't want to re-write what office automation already does,
unless we have no choice or no other alternative.

Basically, the main task is conversion of office docs to tiff and saving the
tiff files in another system.