How to use Access VBA to scan document to PDF

[HouseOfDogs]

I have an Access 2010 Form that I have a combo box that has Document Types in it, that I would like to automate where the user chooses the Type from the combo box, and clicks a button and it automatically scans the document on our Canon Printer and Saves it to a predefined Location and Name based on the Document Type.  I would also like to give the user the choice on the Form for the Scan Type: Color Scan, B&W Scan, Grayscale, etc.

What I am trying to eliminate the user from doing is manually placing the document on the Printer, opening up Adobe 2017, choose the Menu option Create>From Scanner, and then choose Color, B&W, Grayscale, and then after it finishes scanning, save the document.  I would still need to have the Adobe dialog box pop up that lets the user choose whether or not to scan additional pages that way they can manually place each page on the Printer rather than use the Automatic Document Feeder.

Any VBA code would be very helpful.

Thank you

[HouseOfDogs]

I am revisiting this issue, as I don't have a full solution yet

[Test Screen Name]

So far as I know, Acrobat offers no API to automate scanning. There may be separate third party apps or components which control the scanner (without using Acrobat), and are designed for automation.

[HouseOfDogs]

I have looked into the WIA feature, but that does not scan directly to a PDF; instead it does JPEG or GIF, etc... and I don't want to first scan to that type only to convert it to a PDF, for fear of losing any quality in the conversion as well as the filesize is quite large when converting a JPG image into a PDF document.  It is hard to believe Acrobat doesn't have something in their SDK that you can control that function (the Scanner) of the Acrobat product.

[HouseOfDogs]

Has anyone else been able to control the Scanner piece of the Adobe Acrobat product using their APIs outlined in their SDK?  This is the last piece that I would need to be able to complete my scanner functionality of my Access database?  The WIA feature just will not work as it would require converting a JPG or BMP image into a PDF which results in quality loss and huge PDF file sizes

[Test Screen Name]

I think you may be trying to do too much with Acrobat, which is basically an interactive end-user tool with very limited automation features. You probably need to look for specialist tools, or write them. Microsoft's WIA scripting interface may deliver BMP, PNG or TIFF which are lossless (do not scan to GIF or JPEG!) What you might do is scan to TIFF and use a specialised TIFF to PDF converter. Acrobat indeed might be used for this, but it doesn't sound like it's designed for your kind of work, so I'd personally steer clear.

[HouseOfDogs]

Revisiting this issue as I'd still like to know how to accomplish this?  Is there any VBA code samples that allow my form to launch the "PDF from Scanner" option that you would use if you were to use Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020, using any of the Adobe API's?

[Bernd Alheit]

There is no API in Adobe Acrobat for this.