This Automator tip focuses on quickly and easily converting the format of your Microsoft Word documents to PDF by creating a workflow and saving it as a Finder Plugin. Note: For Automator to convert word to PDF you’ll need to have Office 2011 or upgraded your version of Office from 2011. Office 365 does not include the Word automator actions according to this support thread.
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To create an Automator workflow that will take your selected Word documents in a Finder window and convert them to PDF:
- Open Automator and create a new workflow.
- Search for “Get Selected Finder Items” and drag it to your workflow – This will tell the automator task to grab all the items you’ve selected in Finder
- Next add the “Copy Finder Items” action in automator – This will allow you to backup the items before you perform any action on them.
- Finally select “Convert Format of Word Document” – Select Portable Document Format (PDF)
Save The Word to PDF Workflow as a Plugin
With these three action items you have everything you need to quickly convert word documents. To make it even easier lets save Automator workflow as a Finder plugin.
- Select File
- Select Save as Plugin
- Name the plugin and Select Plugin for: Finder.
Test Out The New Finder Plugin To Convert Word to PDF
I named the plugin Word2PDF and I’m now ready to test our new Finder plugin:
- Open a Finder Window and navigate to a folder that contains word documents
- Select the word documents and right click (command + click)
- Select More, then Automator, and then Word2PDF (Or whatever you named your Finder plugin
Your computer will then automatically convert the Word files to PDF.
If you only have the latest version of off your best bet is to save as PDF or print as PDF for each document. It’s a bit slower but should get you a word document in PDF format.