pdfxtools command line - /output option questions

[drambo61]

Hi all,
We're trying to use pdfxtools.exe from the command line to flatten a known file and save it to a specified output file (not overwriting the input file). No matter what we do with the /output option, it always pops up a "Save as" dialog box asking for the filename. Is there a proper syntax for running this command silently?

Our current syntax is as follows:

pdfxtools /runtool:showui=no;showprog=no;showrep=no pdft.tool.flattenComments "c:\temp\bob.pdf" /Output:folder=\"c:\temp"\;filename=\"bob2.pdf"\;showfiles=no;overwrite=yes

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Drambo61,

It looks like you have a few typos in your command there, it should instead be like so:

Code: Select all

pdfxtools /runtool:showui=no;showprog=no;showrep=no pdft.tool.flattenComments "c:\temp\bob.pdf" /Output:folder=\"c:\temp\";filename=\"bob2.pdf\";showfiles=no;overwrite=yes

Specifically, you have a few instances of " and / being in the incorrect order.
Also, I notice you said you DO NOT want to overwrite the input file, but they you have overwrite=yes in your command, did you mean to set this as "no"?

Beyond that, I might also suggest that you instead create a custom tool, so that you can setup your desired settings with the GUI, and then make a command that just directly runs it directly. You could also use Folder monitors to achieve a setup where you do not even need to run the command, just drop the desired file into an "input" folder.

[drambo61]

Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the quick reply. Thank you for the corrected syntax (I did try to use the documentation correctly but apparently failed). Using your syntax gives me the same results: a "Save File" dialog pops up asking for the output filename.

The overwrite issue was just me trying anything I could to try to make this succeed. We don't intend to overwrite any existing files.

Our intent is to shell out of an existing PDF processing program that we are writing and flatten the PDF as silently as possible. We know the filename going in, and we'd like to specify it for the output. We just can't have the "Save File" dialog popping up and stopping the process.

Thanks,
Dave

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Drambo61,

If those are your needs then setting up a custom tool and using a folder monitor would certainly be the best scenario, as it could make this entire process both silent and automated, you would just need to save the pdf file (or move it) into the designated "input folder", and PDF-Tools would automatically kick in and work its magic, you can configure it to use the same filename as the input file or modify it using Macros, such as including autonumbering incase a duplicate appears. I would highly recommend that you look over those two articles I sent in my previous post, it is a very quick and easy process to complete and then you never need to think about it again.

As for the command itself, I cannot see any reason why it should not be working as expected, but I may be missing something as I do not work with the command line often personally. Can you please ensure that you are running the latest version of the software and try this again?

I will ask my colleagues to take a look at this as well, a second opinion will certainly be useful.

Kind regards,

[drambo61]

Hi Daniel,
I _was_ using a 7.x version of PDFXChange and Tools, so I updated to 8.0.336 this morning. I didn't retry the command line syntax at first; I toyed around with the GUI tools to see how they reacted, and after I got a monitor working successfully, I decided to retry my command line with the settings specified in the GUI and it worked exactly as I wanted - no prompt for the output filename.

Thanks very much for your assistance,
Dave

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Glad to hear the update solved it!

Have an excellent day!