Explorer Sendto or Context convert doc to pdf same dir

dianedebuda · 28 May 2015

Want to convert doc to pdf in same dir. Would like to do this with some sort of Explorer context entry.

There are 2 free converters that I've looked at to do the "guts", but neither has the ability to store the pdf in the same folder as the source doc.

PDFCreator: comes close with context entry, but there's no way to auto select the pdf destination dir to be same as source doc's. Dealing with the adware here is a real PIA. Would buy the ad-free version if solved the folder issue.

CutePDF: Can this be put in a bat for context or SendTo? Mostly I don't know how to get the path for the source doc; the other stuff I can do.
Manually the steps are:
1- Select CutePDF Writer as default printer (I can do this with bat now)
2-Open secondary Explorer window to temp folder for CutePDF output: CutePDFTemp (same drive as source docs)
3-In primary Explorer window, navigate to source doc file
4-Context Print. Has undesirable destination popup. Leave at last used=CutePDFTemp.
5-Drag/Drop new pdf from CutePDFTemp to doc's source dir
6-repeat 3-5 as needed
7-Reselect normal default printer

If I can grab the doc's path from the context, I can do the CutePDFTemp drag/drop in the bat and the secondary Explorer window would not be needed.

MilesAhead · 04 Jun 2015

I have a small utility that may be helpful in this scenario in place of using the batch file. It is called PastePath. You may download it from my page here:
Miles Ahead's Windows Downloads

All my programs are free for you to use at your own risk. The way PastePath works, is it sits in the tray, every time an Explorer window is the active window, it remembers the path. You can paste the path into anything that accepts a paste from the clipboard. As example if you right click a file in C:\docs and choose print, when it gets time to enter the destination folder just click the mouse in the box and press Control Winkey right click. C:\docs will be pasted.

See the Readme.txt file included in the zip for details.

If that doesn't fit the purpose see the explanation for file path expansion for batch on this page:

Batch Extract path and filename from a variable - Stack Overflow