I have been tasked with a job of creating a power shell script that can be run from the command prompt that will make use of Microsoft Word (2013) to open a specified word document and save it as a PDF document.
First time PowerShell user, but I was successful in creating a short script to do the job, as follows…
$word=new-object -comobject word.application
$doc=$word.documents.Open("c:\TEST.docx")
$doc.SaveAs([ref]"c:\test.pdf", [ref]17)
$doc.Close()
$word.Quit()
Which once saved as a ps1 file works well when run with the use of following command…
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -file c:\SaveToPDF.ps1
However I have subsequently been asked too allow this script to be run on a remote computer. So I have started investigating this feature and have been able to create another power shell script that will run a command line job on a remote computer, as follows, that will run the help command
$Username = "Username"
$Password = "PWD123"
$ComputerName = "PC-RemoteApps"
$Script = {help}
$SecurePassWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText $Password -Force
$Cred = New-Object -TypeName "System.Management.Automation.PSCredential" -ArgumentList $Username, $SecurePassWord
$Session = New-PSSession -ComputerName $ComputerName -credential $Cred
$Job = Invoke-Command -Session $Session -Scriptblock $Script
echo $Job
Remove-PSSession -Session $Session
Which also works and the results of the help command are echoed back to the local PC. So the next step is to simply change the $Script variable to include the command I wish to run to action the conversion of the Word document to PDF, as follows…
$Script = {powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -file c:\SaveToPDF.ps1}
However, this generates an error (See Below) that does not make much sense seeing how the script works when run on the remote PC just fine…
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
- CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (You cannot call...ued expression.:String) [], remoteException
- FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError
At C:\SaveToPDF.ps1:4 char:12
$doc.SaveAs <<<< ([ref]"c:\test.pdf", [ref]17)
- CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (saveas:String) [], RuntimeException
- FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
At C:\SaveToPDF.ps1:5 char:11
$doc.Close <<<< ()
- CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (Close:String) [], RuntimeException
- FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
I have even tried to include the power shell script command directly into the remote processing script, as follows…
$Script = {
$word=new-object -comobject word.application
$doc=$word.documents.Open("c:\TEST.docx")
$doc.SaveAs([ref]"c:\test.pdf", [ref]17)
$doc.Close()
$word.Quit()
}
Where I is still get an error that basically tells me the same thing, as follows…
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
- CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (SaveAs:String) [], RuntimeException
- FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
- CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (Close:String) [], RuntimeException
- FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
It looks to me as though the $doc variable is not set to anything and therefore the SaveAs() and Close() methods cannot be called. Yet the source file ("c:\TEST.docx") exists in this location on the remote PC and the commands do run OK when run on the remote PC.
I have even moved the test files to network locations that both the Local and Remote PC have read write access too and I still get the same set of errors.
So at this point I have come to you guys to see if you can let me know what I am missing.
Hope you can help
Thanks
Carl
