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How It Works |
The world
most popular email client - Microsoft Outlook
, is still devoid for support of PDF and XPS and other
popular document formats, unlike other applications
in the Microsoft
Office 2007 and 2010 suite. So, as
usual, most of us has to either rely on Adobe
Acrobat plug-in (which means, you will have
to buy it and yes, it costs a lot
too) or, make use of a PDF printer driver, or
crudely, one can just simply copy-paste the content of
the web page to Microsoft Word and convert to PDF/XPS.
Document Exporter is designed to bridge this gap by
bringing the PDF/XPS supports in Microsoft Outlook,
by leveraging your existing investment in Microsoft
Office.
Internally, Document Exporter
makes use of Microsoft Office application such as
Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. to perform the
processing/export and hence, you are able to save
emails to PDF and XPS plus other popular formats
such as DOC, DOCX, RTF, ODT, MHT and filtered web
friendly HTML.
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Generating a PDF and
other document format from a selected
Outlook item |
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The
easiest way to generate a PDF or
document format is to simply select an
Outlook item, either from the Explorer
window or by opening the Outlook item in
its inspector window, and clicking one
of the document format from the 'Export
to File...' drop down menu.
In Outlook 2010, these menu items
are available under the context menu (i.e.,
popup menu you get when you right-click the
selected items)
Context menu when a single item is selected:
And you can then export the selected Outlook item to
a PDF or other support document format. In the 'Save
As' dialog, the file name of the document to be
generated is pre-filled with metadata information of
the selected Outlook item. For example, below in the
screenshot, the file name is in the format
Subject + Underscore (_) + Received Time.
This way you don't even need to input and key in the
name of the document.
You can of course customize what metadata
information is used from the Outlook item to name
the generated document from Outlook > Document
Exporter toolbar/ribbon > Settings. You can
customize the default naming scheme for different
type of Outlook items such as mails, appointments or
tasks separately .
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Generating PDF files and other other
document formats in batch from multiple
selected Outlook items |
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When you
select multiple Outlook items, the drop
down options under the 'Export to File'
menu will change to reflect the varied
way of batch processing the items and
export to a document format. One of
these options is to generate individual
PDF or document format from each of the
selected Outlook item in batch.
Context menu when multiple Outlook items are
selected:
This 'Batch Export' dialog enables you
to specify the destination folder where
all the document files would be saved.
You also have the option to choose what
file title the generated documents would
take - either a defined generic name or
use metadata information extracted from
the Outlook item, such as
Subject, Sendername, ReceivedTime
etc.
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Generating a merged
single PDF file or other document format
containing all the selected Outlook
items. |
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When you
select multiple Outlook items, the drop
down options under the 'Export to File'
menu will change to reflect the varied
way of batch processing the items and
export to a document format. One of
these options is to generate individual
PDF or document format from each of the
selected Outlook item in batch.
Choose any one of this
option if all you want is to merge all
the selected mail (or post) items to a
single document. You will be prompted to
specify a filename and the folder
location to save the document.
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Appending selected Outlook items to
an existing PDF file |
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Document Exporter
supports appending any selected
Outlook items, single or multiple,
to a specified existing PDF file.
The selected items will be converted
to PDF format and would be appended
at the end of the specified existing
PDF file.
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Converting attachments
to PDF |
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You can
set Document Exporter add-in to include
attachments when generated PDF document
from Outlook items. There are three ways
attachments can be outputted to PDF - as
separate PDF file for each attachment,
or, merge all attachments to a single
PDF file, or merge all the attachments
along with the email content to one
single PDF file. Whether the attachments
are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Web, images
or simply plain text documents, Document
Exporter would automatically convert to
PDF.
Attachment formats that are supported
for conversion to PDF files:
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Word Files (*.docx, *.docm, *.doc,
*.dot, *.dotx, *.dot, *.dotm)
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Excel files (*.xl, *.xlsx, *.xlsm,
*.xlsb, *.xlam, *.xltx, *.xltm, *.xls,
*.xlt, *.xla, *.xlm, *.xlw
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PowerPoint Presentation files (*.pptx,
*.ppt, *.pptm, *.ppsx, *.pps, *.ppsm,
*.potx, *.pot, *.potm, *.odp)
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Images (*.bmp, *.gif, *.png, *.jpg,
*.jpeg, *.tif, *.tiff, *.pcx, *.psd)
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Single File Web Page (*.mht; *.mhtml)
- Web
Page (*.htm; *.html)
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Rich Text Format (*.rtf)
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Plain Text (*.txtl *.prn; *.csv)
- XML
Document (*.xml)
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OpenDocument Text (*.odt)
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Works 6.0 - 9.0 (*.wps)
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Embed PDF version
of the attachments back to the
Outlook item |
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If you
have an iPad, iPhone or other tablet
devices, you would have probably
experience the inability to view various
attachment file formats from within your
email. PDF format support, is however
built-in natively in most of these
devices and you can easily preview the
PDF attachment within the email. Keeping
this limitation in mind, Document
Exporter now supports embedding the PDF
version of the attachments back to the
email item, so that you can easily
preview all the non-PDF attachments in
your hand-held device. You can choose to
merge all attachments to a single PDF,
or to separate PDF files, and embed to
the original email.
PDF Embedding options under Output
Settings
Email before
embedding the PDF version of the
attachments:
Email after
embedding a single PDF version,
merged of all the attachments:
Email after
embedding separate PDF version of
each non-PDF attachment:
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Automatic export of PDF
and other formats from incoming emails |
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A major feature of
Document Exporter is the
real-time monitoring of any
number of Outlook folders or
Exchange mailboxes. This will
automatically process incoming mails
or newly added appointment and task
items and generate PDF or other
documents based on the user chosen
format, without any intervention
from the user. This automatic
conversion of Outlook items to PDF
or XPS documents requires no input
and intervention from the user. Now,
you can easily maintain a parallel
copy or backup of your current
Outlook items.
Automatic export works by allowing
Document Exporter to monitor user
specified Outlook folders or
Exchange mailboxes, such that, when
new emails are received or new
appointments or tasks are added,
Document Exporter automatically
processes those items in real time
and generate document files as per
the user pre-settings for that
particular Outlook folder or
mailbox.
To add a new Outlook folder, for
automatic export
When you press the
‘Select Folder...’ button, you will
be prompted to choose an Outlook
folder, which you want Document
Exporter to monitor for automatic
export. You can select a Mail/Post
items folder ( ), or an appointment
folder ( ), or a task folder ( ).
This folder can be a public folder
or a shared mailbox folder also.
To add a new Exchange mailbox, for
automatic export
For adding a new
Exchange mailbox for automatic
export, you will be prompted to
choose a particular user (or mailbox
name) from the global address list.
Make sure that you have access
permission to the chosen mailbox,
otherwise, Document Exporter won’t
be able to process incoming emails
on that mailbox and no document
files would be generated.
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How to maintain a
single PDF file for the automatic
export for a folder/mailbox |
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With the
PDF option, you can opt to output a
separate PDF file for each Outlook item
received or added (just like for other
format such as DOC, XPS), or you can opt
to maintain a single PDF file, on which,
every new Outlook item received or added
will be appended over this single PDF
file, just like an e-book.
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The entire
appending of new Outlook
items to this particular PDF
file is seamless to the
user, and if you have
checked the option for
saving attachments to
subfolder in Setttings, all
the attachment files from
the appended items will be
outputted to the
PDF_Attachments subfolder. (Eg.
Sales Report_Attachments) |
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Control over the generated documents |
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You have
complete control over the
PDF/XPS document generation.
You can customize the
default file naming scheme
by choosing your own
metadata fields, specify the
attachments output behaviour,
choose single or multiple
PDF merge options and modify
the page setup and layout
etc.
There are five portions in this
Settings Panel:
1) Convert
Attachments to PDF
A new feature added in version 5
release is the support for
converting attachments to PDF files.
The conversion of attachments to PDF
files works for all scenarios i.e.,
single or multiple
mails export, merging multiple
mails, forwarding single or merged
emails etc.
The PDF output can be
controlled in three ways:
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Output to
individual PDF
- Each attachment can be
converted to individual PDF
file. The PDF files will be
placed under a subfolder (eg.
'documentName_Attachments_PDF'
assuming the PDF document of
the email was saved as 'documentName.pdf').
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Merge
all attachments to a
single PDF
- All attachments can be
merged to a single PDF.
This single PDF file
will be placed under a
subfolder (eg. 'documentName_Attachments_PDF'
assuming the PDF
document of the email
was saved as 'documentName.pdf'.
The single PDF file that
has all the merged
attachments will have a
name like 'Documents_mergedAttachments.pdf').
When multiple mails or
appointments are merged
and exported, all the
attachments of each of
the mail or appointment
item would be converted
and saved to the same
subfolder (eg. 'MergedDocumentName_Attachments_PDF'
assuming the document
was saved as 'MergeDocumentName.pdf').
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Append all
attachments to the
email PDF
- All attachments
can be appended to
the PDF document of
the mail item. This
result PDF file will
contain the email,
as well as all the
attachment files.
If multiple mails or
appointments are
selected for a
single merged PDF
document, all the
attachments of each
of the mail or
appointment item
would also be merged
to the PDF document.
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Only
attachments having the
following extensions are
supported for converting
to PDF format.
docx, docm, doc, dot,
dotx, dot, htm, html,
mht, mhtl, rtf, txt, odt,
wpd, wps, xl, xlsx, xlsm,
xlsb, xlam, xltx, xltm,
xls, xlt, xla, xlm, xlw,
odc, uxdc, ods, csv, prn,
pptx, ppt, pptm, ppsx,
pps, ppsm, potx, pot,
potm, odp, bmp, gif, png,
tif, tiff, jpg, jpeg,
pcx, psd
If the attachment is a
PDF file, then it is
directly outputted or
merged along with the
other attachments
format.
Additionally, you can
exclude PDF attachments
from being included when
a PDF email is
forwarded.
2) PDF optimization
Here, you can specify the
optimization for published PDF
files. If you use the first option 'Optimize
for Quality', the output file
will be larger, but will be in high
quality. This is useful for printing
purposes. On the other hand, the
second option 'Optimize for
Publishing' gives you a minimum
size of the PDF file, by
compromising in the quality a bit.
This is ideal for sharing over the
internet, email etc.
3) Append PDF options
You can now append selected
Outlook items to an existing
PDF file. You can choose if
to output the final document
file (containing the
appended pages) as a new PDF
file, or to overwrite the
existing (original) PDF
file.
4)
Default file naming scheme
based on metadata
information
You can customize the
default naming scheme of the
generated documents for
different type of Outlook
items such as mails,
appointments or tasks
separately. There are two
drop downs from which you
can choose two metadata
fields, and these two
portions would be
concatenated by the chosen
symbol of the separator drop
down. The availability of
the fields would depend on
the Outlook item type. For
example, for appointment,
you will have fields
specific to that Outlook
type, such as Start time,
End time, Organizer etc.
5) Page Setup
You can define the
orientation -
landscape or portrait,
as well as choose between
the following paper size for
the generated documents:
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Letter |
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Tabloid |
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Ledger |
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Legal |
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Executive |
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A3 |
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A4 |
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11 x
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10 x
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6) Output Attachments in original
state to a subfolder
Export Attachments
to a subfolder when saving a mail,
appointment or task item to a
document format. If you enable this
option, and when you save an email
to a document, it would also export
all the available attachments of the
item, to a subfolder (eg. 'documentName_Attachments'
assuming the document was saved as 'documentName.pdf').
You can also optionally exclude
inline image and hidden attachments
from exporting.
If multiple mails or
appointments are merged and exported
as a single document, then, all the
attachments of each of the mail or
appointment item would be saved to
the same subfolder (eg.
'MergedDocumentName_Attachments'
assuming the document was saved as
'MergeDocumentName.pdf'). |
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