Test if Adobe Installed (Excel VBA XP)

Topic

New Reply

I’m looking for some code to test if abode pdf distiller is installed. We are writing an application that has 3 print options …

print to paper
print preview
print to pdf

… and I want to grey out the ‘print to pdf’ if distiller is not installed.

In the past I have used code like

Dim myPDF As pdfDistiller
Set myPDF = New pdfDistiller
myPDF.FileToPDF vFileName & ".ps", _
    vFileName & ".pdf", ""

but this only works if I have checked the reference to the distiller. Obviously, on machines without distiller installed, this code will not even compile. Which brings me back to some code to test if distiller is installed – then I can give the user the ‘print to pdf’ option and execute the code above.

Reply | Quote

Replies

Hi Tim,

I’m sure there’s more than one way to do it, but here’s one option:

Sub UseDistiller()
    Dim oDistiller As Object
    Set oDistiller = GetPdfDistiller
    If oDistiller Is Nothing Then
        MsgBox "Sorry! Distiller isn't installed"
    End If
    
    ' Do stuff with distiller
End Sub
'
Function GetPdfDistiller() As Object
On Error Resume Next
Dim oPDFDistiller As Object
' Not sure what the actual class name is for distiller:
Set oPDFDistiller = CreateObject("Adobe.PDFDistiller")

Select Case Err.Number
    Case 0
        Set GetPdfDistiller = oPDFDistiller
    Case 429
        Set GetPdfDistiller = Nothing
    Case Else
        ' Some other error occurred
        ' that you probably want to handle
        Set GetPdfDistiller = Nothing
End Select
End Function

The error that’s thrown when a COM object can’t be created is 429. Hope this helps!

Reply | Quote

You could use late binding:

Dim myPDF As Object

On Error Resume Next

Set myPDF = CreateObject(“PDFDistiller.PDFDistiller.1”)
If myPDF Is Nothing Then
MsgBox “PDF Distiller is not available.”, vbExclamation
Exit Sub
End If

On Error GoTo 0 ‘ or to an error handler label

Reply | Quote

Thanks Guys – that is exactly the code that I was looking for. I created a function to tell me if the PDF is installed and then went from there.

Reply | Quote

Tim

I have just played with the two bits of code Andrew77’s code says I don’t have Adobe Distiller and Hans’s says I do.

I do have it installed so I suggest you get it checked

Reply | Quote

Thanks Jezza – I was using Hans code and had to fake it out (ie always set my IsDistillerInstalled to false) to see how my code handled that outcome.

Reply | Quote

As I mentioned in my original post, I didn’t know the correct name for the Distiller object, because I don’t have Distiller on my machine. Changing the name to the correct name, listed in Hans’ post, should result in correct operation. The only difference in mine is that I split out the late-binding attempt into a separate function.

Reply | Quote

Thanks Andrew

I hope I didn’t come across as criticising your work. if so I am sorry. It was just a friendly warning to Tim

Reply | Quote

No problem. I should have been clearer in my original post.

Cheers.

Reply | Quote