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How to convert files to PDF automatically

3 min read
Mike Puterbaugh

There’s a lot to love about the PDF format - the ability to compress large files, portability across the web and compatibility with almost any operating system makes it easy to work with, especially within creative and marketing teams, where activity is fast-paced and workloads are demanding.  

Now, thanks to Ziflow, marketers have a new option when it comes to leveraging PDFs as part of their project management workflow. Not only can Ziflow easily convert to PDF your native design files, image files or even Microsoft Office files, but they can also then use the newly minted PDFs to further work processes via notifications, file transfers or distribution actions.  For a single file or hundreds at a time.  

How it works

Zibots are what make Ziflow go.  We have a wide range of Zibots for various file and folder processing tasks. One of the most widely used Zibots is our Conver to PDF file conversion Zibot, which allows our users to convert one, or hundreds of, files into PDF’s for use across a wide range of channels.   

A user can specify which file types are to be converted into PDF and also choose to implement password protection, or a wide range of Adobe presets for file size or print quality, on the newly created PDF.  After that initial rule is set up, all any user has to do is drop a file into the specified folder and your Zibot will take care of the rest, each and every time.   

Doing More With Flows

As the video above shows, using Ziflow to convert files to PDF is powerful on its own, but can even more so when used as part of a process.  For example, sharing a new design for the purpose of feedback.  A member of your design team can simply drop a newly created design file (like an AI or PSD) into a Zibot-enabled folder.  From there it will be converted to PDF and then team members can be notified via email (or even a project management app like Basecamp if that's being used by your team), along with a link to the newly avaialble PDF.  Zibots are pretty cool on their own; getting them to work together is awesome.  

Supported file extensions for Ziflow’s PDF converter Zibot:

  • AI
  • PSD
  • MS Office (PPT, DOC, XLS)
  • JPG
  • PNG
  • GIF
  • TIFF

Benefits of using an automated PDF creator:

  • Using Ziflow to automate PDF generation creation is much faster than manually converting each image or document.
  • You can set up as many different workflows for multiple PDF generation outputs as required.
  • Using Ziflow ensures all your teams are using the same settings for PDF output, ensuring a consistent result
  • Using Ziflow makes it very easy for non technical people to “self serve” when they need a PDF saving you time and money in production.
  • Choose from the different PDF output types including Hi Quality Print, Smallest file size, PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4 and custom settings

The Convert to PDF Zibot is just one of the many pre-built Zibots available today to help you and your team automate the manual tasks that take up your valuable time.  

Check out our other #ZiflowHowTo videos

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