After you have created the PDF you could do an “update item” and set the fields of the
PDF file to be the same as the Word file.

Hope this will be a standard functionality in future release. A lot of customers have this problem.

Sorry - I am a complete beginner here. How do I link the two documents in the Where field of the Update item action? Thanks!

We are all beginners sometimes : )

You could save the URL you set as output in convert document, and use it in the where clause.

Just to add, if you publish to a library in a different site (as we've done) you'll want to use the Update Multiple Items to be able to target that new library. I'm sure if you design your libraries correctly with Site Columns, then any future release that allows you to maintain metadata (in the way Copy to SharePoint does) will be a lot easier to implement.

FYI, just for reference, if a document is converted to PDF in the same SP2013 library, the PDF will have the same attributes as the original. It's only in cases where the original and PDF are in separate libraries that the metadata has to manually copied.

Edit: I was mistaken. The attributes appear to only be copied when converting from Office format to Office format (.doc to .docx). Converting Office doc to PDF does not copy the attributes. Sorry for the confusion.

Enjoy!

Gerard, That's not true. Converting a Worddocument to PDF in the same library doesn't give the PDF document the same metadata. (not in my SP2010 environment)

It is for SharePoint 2013.

So if I convert it in-place and then copy to another library will this preserve the metadata?  Thanks!

Igor, yes & no. If the metadata column names and data types match between the two libraries - whether on the same site collection or not, then yes, you can preserve the metadata. Any columns or types that don't match won't be retained when copied.

Edit: I was mistaken. The attributes appear to only be copied when converting from Office format to Office format (.doc to .docx). Converting Office doc to PDF does not copy the attributes. Sorry for the confusion.

Hope this helps.

Can I clarify that the expected behaviour in 2010 is that the created PDF does not auto-populate with the metadata of the original? Is that correct?

If that's the case. I've a library that has require check out and versioning enabled and I need the original metadata* to inherit by the created PDF. Any tips for achieving this, what else should I add to my conversion workflow?

*mainly managed metadata columns but there's also one choice and one number type column.

Thanks

Darrel,

I corrected my posts above. The attributes appear to only be copied when converting from Office format to Office format (.doc to .docx). Converting Office doc to PDF does not copy the attributes, even in SP2013. Sorry for the confusion.

One way I would resolve this is to do the following:

• gather the attributes that aren't empty into variables
• convert the document to PDF
• Checkout the PDF document
• modify the PDF document with the saved attributes
• Checkin the PDF document

It's not an ideal solution, but what's new - it's SharePoint.

Good luck,

Gerard

I'm using the Update Multiple Items, but I keep getting an error saying "Error Updating Multiple items".  It's crazy, I have it working on one of my libraries (Convert to PDF > Publish > Query target list > check out file > Update Multiple items > Commit pending changes > Check in).  Both library's publishing workflow is the same, works in the one and not the other.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks 

Kim