Export Outlook PDF Attachment as JPG?

[Owl]

Hello!

I'm rather new to VBA. I have working code to save pdf attachments to a folder. Is there a way to convert these attachments to an image filetype such as jpg using VBA? I've looked all over the web, but the only solution I can find is to open the pdf in PowerPoint and export it as a jpg, which sadly muddies the quality (I've tried changing the size but it always appears a bit blurry even when I set image size and quality to 330ppi and check "do not compress" and it only exports the first page of the pdf). I tried opening the pdf in Word to save as jpg but it loses some of the pdf content and again will only save the first page. Is there a way to export or convert an outlook pdf attachment to a jpg using VBA? Thank you!

 

[Owl]

So far, I have found solutions using Adobe Acrobat Pro, or another software, or a printer driver that prints to image, but nothing utilizing just Microsoft Office software. Due to the sensitive information contained in the PDF, uploading it somewhere else to convert it really isn't an option.

 

[Dan_W]

I'm reasonably certain that it's doable with just the Office suite (specifically, Word), but it's not quick and might be a bit hit and miss...I completely understand the need to keep things off the internet, and the IT departmet at work would have a collective fit if I even asked about the possibility of installing free software on the work laptop, but how about free PDF tools that do this and do not need to be installed whatsoever?

Specifically, I'm thinking of the XPDF tools (link). There is one small exe into the tool suite that converts PDF files to PNG. If that's ok, it's a fairly trip from PNG to JPG. Is that doable?

 

[Owl]

I'm reasonably certain that it's doable with just the Office suite (specifically, Word), but it's not quick and might be a bit hit and miss...I completely understand the need to keep things off the internet, and the IT departmet at work would have a collective fit if I even asked about the possibility of installing free software on the work laptop, but how about free PDF tools that do this and do not need to be installed whatsoever?

Specifically, I'm thinking of the XPDF tools (link). There is one small exe into the tool suite that converts PDF files to PNG. If that's ok, it's a fairly trip from PNG to JPG. Is that doable?

Hello Dan! Thank you for your response, I've actually stumbled across XPDF and tried to utilize it before, but my company has things so tight that even that won't do - this tool still needs an installation to work. Hence, why I'm trying to figure out a pure Office workaround. I may just have to pitch this tool or Adobe Acrobat Pro and see if I will be able to utilize it with approval but if conversion can be done using Office that's my best bet at the moment so I'm still searching around and trying to mock-up my own code.

 

[Owl]

I remembered that I never updated this! I ended up utilizing Adobe Acrobat Pro to export pdf email attachments as JPEG images. My company had already approved the use of Acrobat Pro, so I went with it.

The code that I wrote requires that users select an email with the pdf attachment they want to convert and press a button mapped to the macro. The macro then asks what folder the user wants to save the exported JPEG images to and converts the pdf attachment. It saves the images into a new subfolder in the selected folder with the date the code was run, and a number appended to the end (to prevent the subfolder from being overwritten).

The macro marks the email as read and sorts it into the inbox folder that matches the name of the folder selected. For example, if you save the images to folder "A" on your computer, there has to be an email folder also called "A" for the program to move the email to after the conversion. This keeps things neat and tidy! I also created a rule that would alert users when they received an email that may have a pdf attachment.