Convert batch of Word files to PDFs in Mac OS X

Question

Say I have several Word files in a folder. Is there a way to generate a batch of PDFs from these files?

Answer 1

Provided you have MS Word (or any other app that can open MS Word files) installed, you can use Automator. Here is a step by step guide on how to set it up for your needs: http://aseriesoftubes.com/articles/how-to-batch-convert-doc-files-to-pdf-format-using-mac-osx-automator/

Brief overview of the whole process:

1. Open Automator
2. Create a new workflow
3. From the library panel on the left, select Files & Folders then double-click Get Specified Finder Items
4. Add the all the files to convert
5. From the library panel, now select Documents, then double click Convert Format of Word Documents
6. From the dropdown menu, select Portable Document Format (PDF)
7. Finally, click the Run button, and it will convert all the files and save them in the same folder where the original Word files are.

Answer 2

If you install the open source AbiWord, you can batch convert from the terminal command line, e.g.:

for FILE in "*.doc" ; do abiword --to=pdf "$FILE" ; done

Answer 3

Here is a previous answer that should work for this purpose;

Batch-convert Word-documents to PDF's (free)