HerGeekness Says: Convert Any File Part II

Anne-Marie Concepcion

In the previous installment of this column, I introduced you to my favorite file-format conversion utilities, little helpers that let you open client-supplied files in the program you prefer. Unfortunately, even if you have every utility I mentioned, you’ll still encounter file formats for which there is no converter.
This just happened to the Windows-based designers at one of my clients. Their creative director called and asked me, “What program on God’s green earth would create a file with the extension ‘.pages’? And how do I open that in Illustrator so I can place the artwork in an InDesign layout?” He had been handed an Apple iWorks page layout file created in Pages ’08.
There is no utility that can convert Pages files to… well, to anything. The more you work on projects that involve mining client assets, the more likely you are to encounter these types of “outlier” files. They’re created from proprietary, niche market, very new, or very old applications that may be the bee’s knees in your client’s company but which no one else has ever heard of.
Short of recreating the file from scratch from a printed sample, the best approach is to export the document to a PDF file. Once you have a PDF to work with, you can use Acrobat Pro commands to extract the file’s text and graphics for editing and re-use elsewhere, or you can get a plug-in that converts PDFs to a file format you own, saving a lot of formatting time. I’ll cover the extraction step of the process in my next column.
But first, you have to figure out how to make the PDF.
Making a PDF Out of a Sow’s Ear
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can do the conversion yourself even when you don’t own the native program. Open Acrobat Pro (any recent version) and choose the File > Create PDF > From File command (Figure 1). Then navigate to the problem child file on your hard drive to select it and see if Acrobat is game for the challenge. If the file is grayed out, or if you get an error during the conversion process (Figure 2), you’ll have to go back to the client for help.
Figures 1 and 2. You can often convert a file to PDF format even if you can’t open the original. Use the Create PDF > From File command in Acrobat Pro’s own File menu. However, it can’t recognize all file types.


As the above error alert suggests, sometimes the only way to make a PDF is to open the source document in its native program and export it or print it to PDF from there. Since you don’t own the program, you’ll have to ask your client to do it on their end and send you the resulting PDF.
If they’re not sure how to do that, walk them through opening the file on their computer to see if PDF appears as a format option in the application’s File > Save As or File > Export dialog boxes, or as a virtual printer in their File > Print dialog box. My creative director friend was happy to learn from his client that yes indeed, Pages ’08 has an Export to PDF command.
If you’re not as lucky, see if one your client’s more geeky or design-oriented co-workers has the same native program and also has a fairly recent version of Acrobat — not Adobe Reader, but Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Pro. That person can open the file in the source program and choose the Adobe PDF virtual printer in the Print dialog box.
Still striking out? Don’t give up yet. See if your client will install a budget-friendly Acrobat alternative, such as PrimoPDF (free), CutePDF ($49.95), or the more robust Nitro Pro ($99). All of these programs add a PDF option to any program’s Print dialog box. I’ll wager that if you tell your client what you’d bill them to recreate the content locked up in their weirdo file format, they’ll agree to install the free PrimoPDF, if nothing else.
By the way, all of these programs (and there are more) are Windows-only. Why aren’t there Acrobat clone utilities for the Macintosh? Because Mac OS X already has it built in. If you’re fortunate enough to learn that yes, your client used a Mac program to create the file, have them open it in the source application and use the Mac’s own Print to PDF command (Figure 3), found in every Print dialog box.
Figure 3. Any document you can open on a Macintosh running OS X can be converted to a PDF using the built-in Save as PDF command. Keep in mind though, that all OS X-generated PDFs are flattened (they’re saved in PDF 1.4 format) so if the file uses transparency, it may be difficult to extract objects from the PDF in one piece.

As a last resort, you can ask your client to print the file to a PostScript file. Most computers have this built in to the OS, or you client can download a virtual PS driver from Adobe’s site. Once you client installs the driver, they open the document, print it to Postscript, and send you the .ps file. You then convert it to PDF with Acrobat Distiller.
If walking your client through making a PDF or Postscript file gives you the heebie-jeebies, it may be possible to bypass the client altogether by using a Web-based PDF conversion service. After you sign up for an account, you upload the file the client sent you in its native format. A short time later, the services e-mails you a link to the PDF. One caveat: These services don’t support every format. Search on the Web for “online PDF conversion” to find dozens of free and low-cost services.
To convert InDesign, FrameMaker, or PageMaker files to PDF when you don’t own those programs, or to convert any PostScript file to PDF when you don’t own Distiller, check out Adobe’s own CreatePDF service (Figure 4). It’s available on Adobe’s main Web site or as part of the Acrobat.com service. The first five files you upload are converted free of charge.
Figure 4.Why not go to the source to create a PDF?

Hopefully, you’ve now converted that funky file to a PDF. For the final step — extracting assets from that PDF —go to part III.