How to Use PDF as SharePoint Content Type Template

I recently came across a compatibility issue with Adobe PDF and SharePoint.  No surprise here because Microsoft products aren't even fully compatible with each other, let alone other applications.  

The issue:  When you open up an editable PDF from a MOSS document library, make some changes to it, and then want to save it back to the document library, the default save location is NOT the MOSS document library. 

The easiest solution:  Edit the PDF from the SharePoint document library, provide a link in the PDF that users can copy and then paste into the file location when they save the PDF.  The link should be the URL for the SharePoint document library.  This solution is not the best, obviously, but it requires the least amount of work, requires no coding, and gets the job done. Another option is to just not use PDFs.....use Word instead.  MS Word can capture SharePoint metadata that can be displayed directly in the SP document library - for both MOSS and SharePoint 2010. 

Workaround 1 (only for tech savvy users): You can always map the SharePoint site to one of your network drives.  This enables you to actually browse to the document library from the PDF save dialog box.

Workaround 2 (duplicating document approach): Instruct users to save PDF locally, then to upload to the SharePoint site.  Then to preferably delete the local copy they saved. 

Workaround 3 (find out why this does not work):  Create a PDF content type!  Creating a content type with a PDF template should allow you to open up PDFs in SharePoint, fill out info, and then save back to SharePoint, right?  But wait, this does not work.  You get the following error message if you try to open up the PDF content type template from a document library:

 

This does not work because SharePoint only knows how to open Office file extensions.   

How to Effectively Use Windows Explorer for Migrations

In this post I will explain how I've used Explorer View in both MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010.  This process lets you quickly move documents from either a MOSS Document Library to another MOSS Document Library, or from a MOSS Document Library to a SharePoint 2010 Document Library. 

In MOSS 2007, you can find Windows Explorer by navigating to a Document Library, clicking the "Actions" drop-down menu, and then selecting "Open with Windows Explorer".  

 

This will launch Windows Explorer and you will be able to see all of the documents in the library through this explorer interface.  

In SharePoint 2010, navigate to a Document Library and then select the "Library" ribbon tab. Windows Explorer is located directly below the Excel icon.  Depending on how your browser is sized, you will see one of the two screenshots below:

 

 

The Windows Explorer icon is the tiny computer in front of the folder, with an arrow pointing from the folder to the computer.  

Before I explain the process for migrating several MOSS 2007 Document Libraries into a single 2010 Document Library, it is important to note that this process will replace the Created By and Modified By metadata properties of the original documents.  Just something to keep in mind in case your company uses this metadata. 

To move the documents from 2007 to 2010, just open up Windows Explorer for the 2007 and the 2010 Document Libraries, and then copy and paste from 2007 to 2010.  It's almost as simple as that.  If you have metadata from the 2007 Document Library you want to carry over to the 2010 library, then after you've copied and pasted the documents, then open up the 2010 Document Library in Datasheet View (after you've created the necessary metadata columns in your 2010 Document Library).  Also open up the 2007 Document Library in Datasheet View so that you can basically just copy and paste the metadata from the 2007 to the 2010 environment.  Be careful doing this though, because the order of the documents in the 2010 Document Library may be different from the 2007 Document Library.  To fix this, just apply the same filtering on the 2010 Library so that copying over the metadata will be much easier.  

If you need to define required fields in the 2010 library, make sure you only do this AFTER you've copied over all of the metadata, or else you won't be able to copy the metadata in bulk.  

Please leave comments/questions if anything in this post is unclear.  The issue this post addresses is how to combine several 2007 Document Libraries into a single 2010 Document Library without using any scripts.