I'm trying to convert documents from html,txt to pdf,odt and vice versa.. But only odt to pdf seems to work.. No other file formats are converted
Here are my commands
libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf test.html [Not working]
libreoffice --headless --convert-to odt test.html [Not working]
libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf test.docx [Not working]
libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf test.odt [Working]
On Windows I encountered the following problem: I tried to convert all DOC files to PDF using the following command:
It failed without any error message. But it worked when I put a filename of one of the files instead of
*.doc
. So apparently it was a problem with resolving wildcard in*.doc
. What I did is execute exactly the same command as above but from Git Bash instead of normal command prompt (cmd.exe). It worked. What is more: in Git Bash it displayed progress information and informative messages!So my advice is: if you're running soffice.exe on Windows and don't get any output, run the command from Git Bash (you can get Git Bash by installing Git for Windows)
One of the problems that I encountered with libreoffice was the problem with empty spaces. After I slugged the name ("test-document.docx" instead of test "documnet.docx") it worked perfectly. From version 4.2.8.2 - 5.3.
This is a known issue in LibreOffice that was fixed in version 5.3.0. Before this fix when an instance of LibreOffice is running --convert-to or any other command would silently terminate without doing anything.
If your version is older than that you could consider the solution suggested by Frank Yin here. That is close all open LibreOffice documents before running the conversion.
If you cannot close all open LibreOffice documents to run the conversion, or if you find it inconvenient, you could try a solution suggested in the comments to the original bug.
If you have LibreOffice version before 4.5 run
If you are running LibreOffice version between 4.5 and 5.3 run
Here
$HOME/.libreoffice-headless
is a new profile directory different from your main LibreOffice profile.Try closing all running instances of LibreOffice before executing the command. This was the root cause of my pain.
I had to install the
xvfb
package (yum install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb
), it is thexserver
dummy.The following works
libreoffice --invisible -convert-to docx myFile.odt
The option
--invisible
does not start up the GUI but gives some clues on the command line what is happening.Tested on Linux Mint 13.