Convert text file to PDF file using Powershell

Question

I have a text file that has simple firmware versions on it. I need to convert the text file to a secure pdf file using powershell scripts.

Also, Is there a way to put a date and timestamp on the file when its converted?

I don't quite know how to do it I'm fairly new using powershell, thanks!

Can you be more specific about the text file? And does the computer that will be running the script has Word 2010/2013 installed? — Chris, May 27 '14 at 15:09
My machine has Word 2007 installed. It needs to run on almost all machines though, and I cant assume they have word installed. Is that the only way? The Text file has just text separated by endlines, more specifically just the part and the firmware number and so on.I could possibly do it in c# but after some research it seems I cant do it nativley without another library — gmoney, May 27 '14 at 15:24
I think it is possible to do it in PowerShell/C# with Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word. Word is not the only way in my opinion but you'll need third party library/software. Also this [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/607669/how-do-i-convert-word-files-to-pdf-programmatically) might help. — Chris, May 27 '14 at 15:59
Powershell does not inherently have the ability to convert to or from PDF. You will need to either package your script with libraries to perform the conversion, or need to be able to assume that they will have Word or some other application installed that will perform the conversion for you. — TheMadTechnician, May 27 '14 at 17:11

Tim Ferrill · Answer 1 · 2016-07-23T16:47:28.870

2

I got this to work with Word 2010, but it should work with 2007 as well:

# File paths
$txtPath = "C:\Users\Public\test.txt"
$pdfPath = "C:\Users\Public\test.pdf"

# Required Word Variables
$wdExportFormatPDF = 17
$wdDoNotSaveChanges = 0

# Create a hidden Word window
$word = New-Object -ComObject word.application
$word.visible = $false

# Add a Word document
$doc = $word.documents.add()

# Put the text into the Word document
$txt = Get-Content $txtPath
$selection = $word.selection
$selection.typeText($txt)

# Set the page orientation to landscape
$doc.PageSetup.Orientation = 1

# Export the PDF file and close without saving a Word document
$doc.ExportAsFixedFormat($pdfPath,$wdExportFormatPDF)
$doc.close([ref]$wdDoNotSaveChanges)
$word.Quit()

edited Jul 23 '16 at 16:47

answered May 27 '14 at 16:58

Tim Ferrill

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Does the pdf in this case need to be created before we run the script? – gmoney May 27 '14 at 18:05
You don't need to pre-create the PDF. – Tim Ferrill May 27 '14 at 19:10
@TimFerrill hope this can still get answered now, but is there any way that I can do this and make the PDF page landscape, rather than portrait? – danglesauce19 Jul 18 '16 at 18:36
@chrisdoubleu13 Sure thing. Added a line to handle the page orientation. – Tim Ferrill Jul 23 '16 at 16:47
@TimFerrill Is there a way to keep the formatting of the content of the txt file, for example the line breaks? – StackJack Aug 02 '23 at 13:40
@StackJack I think adding -Raw to the Get-Content line will do it: $txt = Get-Content $txtPath -Raw – Tim Ferrill Aug 10 '23 at 15:31

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 27 '14 at 18:07

An alternative to having to assume that the user has Word or some other such application installed would be to include a library with your script that will support converting text to PDF. iTextSharp was specifically designed to work with .Net to create and maintain PDF documents. You can get it here.

The only stipulation is that it is licensed software using the AGPL (free!) license structure unless you plan on packing this within your own software or some such and don't plan on having it be open source. It sounds like you're just writing a script, that should not be a problem. If you go find a v4 copy of iTextSharp you can actually get away without having to disclose everything as open source, so you may want to go that route.

Good reference for using it with powershell is slipsec.com/blog post 414, which is where I usually reference to borrow code when I have to use the library myself (twice, but I think it's tedious and annoying so I don't use it often, but then again I rarely need to generate PDF documents in bulk or in an automated fashion).

So, the nitty gritty... This loads the DLL, creates the objects needed to generate the PDF file (it's using the font Ariel, at a font size of 10).

Then it reads the source file (C:\temp\source.txt is used as an example), and adds the content to the $paragraph object, adding a New Line character for each line, otherwise is smashes all of the text into one big ugly clump.

Then it opens the file object (effectively creating the file), adds the $paragraph object to the file, and closes the file. No save is needed, adding the $paragraph object writes the data directly to the drive.

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom("C:\path\to\itextsharp\itextsharp.dll")

$doc = New-Object iTextSharp.text.Document
$fileStream = New-Object IO.FileStream("C:\temp\output.pdf", [System.IO.FileMode]::Create)
[iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfWriter]::GetInstance($doc, $filestream)

#iTextSharp provides a class to work with fonts, but first we have to register them:
[iTextSharp.text.FontFactory]::RegisterDirectories()
$arial = [iTextSharp.text.FontFactory]::GetFont("arial", 10)

$paragraph = New-Object iTextSharp.text.Paragraph

$paragraph.add((gc C:\temp\source.txt|%{"$_`n"})) | Out-Null
$doc.open()
$doc.add($paragraph) | Out-Null
$doc.close()

K J · Answer 3 · 2022-12-11T17:36:13.137

0

Using CMD you can do it in one line, clearly for multiple lines of data it will needs be more elaborate. So you could simplest shell a batch file to do something along the lines of.

(echo %Date% & echo/ & echo Hello World!)>temp.txt & write /pt "%cd%\temp.txt" "Microsoft Print to PDF" "Microsoft Print to PDF" "%cd%\temp.pdf" &temp.pdf

edited Dec 11 '22 at 17:36

answered Dec 11 '22 at 17:20

K J

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Convert text file to PDF file using Powershell

3 Answers3

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