Re: [hylafax-users] MS Excel to postscript or pdf converter

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Belenkov N.K. wrote:
> Any one knows good converter?
> i need to fax xls documents from my email-to-fax gateway, and i cant
> find any good converter for excel 2000.

I've never found anything that really made me completely happy with 
automatic Excel-to-fax document conversions.  Let me explain...

I think that the mail-to-fax user needs to be aware of (and sympathetic 
to) the fact that fax machines don't transmit Microsoft Excel documents 
(or Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, WordPerfect, HTML, or 
name-your-favorite-doctype) natively.  And there are many situations 
where things can work against their intent and where the faxed image 
will not look like they expected.  Many times those kinds of documents 
will only print out they way that the user intends on the same system on 
which they were created.  Different fonts are available on different 
systems.  Different printers are available on different systems.  (And 
almost always a fax will be communicated in monochrome and not color or 
greyscale.)

If the user wants to ensure that the receiver gets the image as expected 
they should rely heavily on formats that guarantee presentation: 
Postscript, PDF, PCL, TIFF.

Now, certainly as a service provider you may want to accommodate those 
users who wish to disregard that warning.  There are tools out there to 
do most of those kinds of conversions.  I can't answer your specific 
question with regards to Excel 2000, but my advice to you would be to 
not worry about the "good" part of the converter requirement too much.  
Not just because it's probably more work than it's truly worth, but 
because - depending on your users' definition of "good" - it may simply 
be an impossible task.

Warn them.  Provide something for them if you really must.  But trying 
to accommodate their every whim in this regard will prove to be an 
extreme headache, so don't encourage it.

Thanks,

Lee.


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