Adobe Acrobat Macro

[James Moulder]

I am writing a macro from Excel to 'publish' a worksheet range in PDF.
I recorded a macro but the file name I game the file didn't get
aptured in the recordrd macro. Any ideas how to specify the name for
the PDF without typing it every time?

Cheers

James

[Jim Rech]

More than three years ago I had to come up with to batch create PDF files
from a series of Excel workbooks and automatically feeding in file names was
a big issue. I figured out how it could be done and I've pasted in what I
wrote at the time below. Whether this still applies to the Adobe version
you have I don't know.

--
Jim Rech
Excel MVP

The PDF driver looks for entries in an INI file and uses them for file names
automatically. If it doesn't find these entries then it prompts the user
for a file name. So your process would have to make these entries before
printing each workbook to the PDF "printer".

BTW, the INI file it looks for is "PDFWritr.ini" in the Windows\System
directory. So...

To write entries to INI files using the Windows API you need to have this
declarations at the top of your module:

Declare Function WritePrivateProfileStringA Lib "kernel32" _
(ByVal SectionStr As String, ByVal ItemName As String, _
ByVal Str2Write As String, ByVal IniFileName As String) As Boolean

Although you probably know the path to Windows\system, for portability it's
a good idea to have finding it be automatic. So include this API
declaration too:

Public Declare Function GetSystemDirectory Lib "kernel32" Alias _
"GetSystemDirectoryA" (ByVal lpBuffer As String, ByVal nSize As Long) As
Long

Include this module level variable to hold the path to the INI file:

Dim PDF_INIPath As String

Now before doing any printing run this to set things up:

Sub InitAutoPDF()
SetINIPath ''Set INI path/name variable
SetPDF_INI_Mode "Auto" ''Write entry to INI to put PDF driver in Auto
mode
End Sub

Now in your main file opening/printing macro your must set the name for the
PDF file to be created as each XLS is printed. This one uses the same name
as the source Excel file but with the extension PDF instead of XLS:

Sub MainPrintRoutine()
Dim WriteFile as String, FileLen as Integer
''Need a loop that opens each XLS and
'' puts its name in the variable WriteFile, and
'' the length of its file name in the variable FileLen
'' Then call this to set name in INI file
WritePDFFileName2Ini Left(WriteFile, FileLen - 3) & "pdf"
End Sub

When you're done run this sub to erase the last file name written to the INI
file and to put the PDF driver back in prompting mode:

Sub ResetManualPDF()
WritePDFFileName2Ini ""
SetPDF_INI_Mode "Prompt"
End Sub

And add these supporting subs called from above:

''Writes target PDF file name into INI
''This must be called prior to each printout
Sub WritePDFFileName2Ini(FName As String)
WritePrivateProfileStringA "Acrobat PDFWriter", "PDFFileName", FName,
PDF_INIPath
End Sub

''Set "CreatePDFExcelMacroShowDialog" entry in INI to passed setting
''The settings are "Prompt" and "Auto"
Sub SetPDF_INI_Mode(Setting As String)
WritePrivateProfileStringA "Acrobat PDFWriter",
"CreatePDFExcelMacroShowDialog", Setting, PDF_INIPath
End Sub

''Sets variable pointing to PDF INI file
Function SetINIPath() As Boolean
Dim Buff As String * 100
Dim RetVal As Long
RetVal = GetSystemDirectory(Buff, 100)
If RetVal > 0 Then
PDF_INIPath = Left(Buff, RetVal) & "\PDFWritr.ini"
SetINIPath = True
Else
MsgBox "Cannot find the Windows System Directory"
End If
End Function