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Asked: 2019-04-11 06:47:10 +0800 CST

PDF a set of Office Libre files from the command line

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Assume a set of .docx files are in a directory to be converted to .pdf format. Is there a clever way to list the files and pipe it into a command that would 'print' the pdf files to a target directory? For example the resulting output of 

ls -l *.docx

would be fed into the pdf-command (how this is done is at your discretion).

Assume MS-Word is not installed on the PC (Office Libre installed).

Preference is for solutions requiring minimal installation of Ubuntu utilities / packages and are well documented. Thank you

pdf pipe

2 Answers

  1. This simple command should help:

    soffice --headless --convert-to pdf ./* --outdir /path/to/target

    Or:

    soffice --headless --convert-to pdf /path/to/files/folder --outdir /path/to/target

    The format is:

    soffice --headless --convert-to <TargetFileExtension>[:NameOfFilter] file_to_convert.xxx

    Where:

    • filter: specific format of file to convert
    • headless: Starts in "headless mode" which allows using the
      application without GUI. This special mode can be used
      when the application is controlled by external clients
      via the API.

    Then to "output" the converted files I used this command:

    ls -p | grep -v / | xargs -d "\n" soffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir /tmp/convert/target 2> /dev/null | grep -Eo "/.*\.doc[x]?"

    Info:

    • ls -p: Append indicators to folders.
    • grep -v /: Only return files.
    • xargs -d "\n": Used to pass the output to the soffice command, takes care of white spaces in filenames.
    • 2> /dev/null: Hide errors.
    • grep -Eo "/.*\.doc[x]?": Return only affected files. And the [x]? catches both .docx and .doc files as used on my end and can be left out.

    Let me add an anwser using the example OP gave:

    ls *.docx | xargs -d "\n" soffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir /tmp/container/target

    see: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/2641/convert-to-command-line-parameter/

    User soffice --help to see more options to that command.

    • 4

  2. unoconv was a fast and simple, though for some reason on the first try it returned an error.

    Install: 

    sudo apt-get install unoconv

    Usage:

    unoconv -f pdf -o proper_format *.docx

    The command to converts all .docx documents in the current directory (whether two or a hundred) to pdf format and place them in the “proper_format” directory beneath the current directory. The directory "proper_format" is created if it does not exist.

    For some reason the first attempt returned an error:

    mkdir ./pdftarget
unoconv -f pdf -o pdftarget *.docx

    Error: Unable to connect or start own listener. Aborting.

    • 1