Converting a large word file to pdf - very slow

Question

I have a 150 page word document that I'm trying to turn into a pdf and it is taking over an hour. What is normal time? Any way to speed it up?

Answer 1

In SharePoint 2010 (not in Foundation) you can use word automation services application to convert doc files to pdf. It allows conversion from all word versions (starting from 97). There is a great article on this feature here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff742315.aspx I'll just provide a short snippet of word to pdf conversion:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.Office.Word.Server.Conversions;
class Program
static void Main(string[] args)
string siteUrl = "http://localhost";
// If you manually installed Word automation services, then replace the name
// in the following line with the name that you assigned to the service when
// you installed it.
string wordAutomationServiceName = "Word Automation Services";
using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite(siteUrl))
ConversionJob job = new ConversionJob(wordAutomationServiceName);
job.UserToken = spSite.UserToken;
job.Settings.UpdateFields = true;
job.Settings.OutputFormat = SaveFormat.PDF;
job.AddFile(siteUrl + "/Shared%20Documents/Test.docx",
siteUrl + "/Shared%20Documents/Test.pdf");
job.Start();
If you are using SharePoint Foundation 2010, you should consider using some 3rd part library like
Aspose or
SyncFusion