Question

I converted .docx file to .pdf file, the text is converting fine, but the images in the .docx file is not appearing, instead it is represented as some special characters, below is my code:

import com.lowagie.text.Document;    
import com.lowagie.text.Paragraph;    
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;    
import java.io.File;    
import java.io.FileOutputStream;    
public class PDFConversion {

    /**
     * 14. This method is used to convert the given file to a PDF format 15.
     * 
     * @param inputFile
     *            - Name and the path of the file 16.
     * @param outputFile
     *            - Name and the path where the PDF file to be saved 17.
     * @param isPictureFile
     *            18.
     */

    private void createPdf(String inputFile, String outputFile, boolean isPictureFile) {
        /**
         * 22. Create a new instance for Document class 23.
         */
        Document pdfDocument = new Document();
        String pdfFilePath = outputFile;

        try {
            FileOutputStream fileOutputStream = new FileOutputStream(pdfFilePath);
            PdfWriter writer = null;
            writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(pdfDocument, fileOutputStream);
            writer.open();
            pdfDocument.open();

            /**
             * 34. Proceed if the file given is a picture file 35.
             */
            if (isPictureFile) {
                pdfDocument.add(com.lowagie.text.Image.getInstance(inputFile));
            }

            /**
             * 41. Proceed if the file given is (.txt,.html,.doc etc) 42.
             */

            else {
                File file = new File(inputFile);
                pdfDocument.add(new Paragraph(org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils
                        .readFileToString(file)));      
            }
            pdfDocument.close();
            writer.close();
        } catch (Exception exception) {
            System.out.println("Document Exception!" + exception);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        PDFConversion pdfConversion = new PDFConversion();
        pdfConversion.createPdf("C:/Users/LENOVO/Downloads/The_JFileChooser_Component.doc",
                "E:/The_JFileChooser_Component.pdf", false);
        // For other files
        // pdfConversion.createPdf("C:/shunmuga/sample.html",
        // "C:/shunmuga/sample.pdf", false);
    }
}

Answer 1

I’m not sure what it could be, but for some alternatives have a look at:

• Apose.Words Library for Java it has some really cool features one of them being docx to pdf conversion by a few simple lines (and it’s reliable):

  Document doc = new Document("d:/test/mydoc.docx");
  doc.Save("d:/test/Out.pdf", SaveFormat.Pdf);
  

• Docx4j
  which can be used to convert docx and many others to PDF, it does this by first using HTML/XML based on IText then converts it to a PDF (All libararies are included within docx4j, just added the itext link for completeness):

  org.docx4j.convert.out.pdf.PdfConversion c
   = new org.docx4j.convert.out.pdf.viaXSLFO.Conversion(wordMLPackage);//using xml
  // = new org.docx4j.convert.out.pdf.viaHTML.Conversion(wordMLPackage);//using html
  // = new org.docx4j.convert.out.pdf.viaIText.Conversion(wordMLPackage);//using itext libs
  

If that’s not enough it has sample source code for you to try.

• xdocreport also comes with a lot of samples for conversion (haven’t downloaded them, but it should have the doc/docx to PDF converter source)