One of the features that GroupDocs offers is document conversion, converting documents from one file formats to another. There are lots of different reasons why this is such a big deal. If you’ve never been sent a file you couldn’t open, or had a file you sent somewhere returned to you because the recipient couldn’t open it – you’ve been lucky! It is becoming much easier to send documents from one application or operating system to another. In the mid-90s, a Word document created on a Mac, for example, could not easily be opened on a Windows PC. Now, what operating system you have isn’t a barrier to sharing documents. The problems now is mostly which programs, and which program versions, you have. Still, converting documents is still not always easy.

Converting documents saves time and effort

Below is a list of six different occasions when it is really handy to be able to convert documents between formats. Four of the examples start with a Microsoft Word file, DOC, and converts it to other formats: DOC to HTML, DOC to PDF, DOC to JPG and, finally, DOC to ODT. I also explain why you might want to convert between Word versions: DOCX to DOC. Not all documents are word documents so there’s also a scenario for when you might want to convert a PowerPoint presentation to image file: PPTX to JPG. At the end, you’ll hopefully have a good idea of why converting documents is useful and how GroupDocs can help you.

1. Your brochure would work great as pages on your website – DOC to HTML

When you run a small company you often find yourself doing everything, from the core focus of your business to marketing, finance and administration. You put together presentation to sell your product or services to potential clients, you write brochure and do a lot of your own graphic design. It makes your life easier if you can re-use some of the materials that you create. With GroupDocs you can convert DOC and DOCX files to a whole host of other formats, including HTML. This means that you can easily turn your Word brochure into pages that you can include on your website.

2. You want to give someone a document that cannot be edited – DOC to PDF

Sometimes you don’t want people to be able to edit the documents you send them. Take the brochure we talked about earlier, for example. You don’t want to send the Word original to people but rather something they cannot edit. PDF files are perfect for this. With GroupDocs, you can convert almost any document to PDF. The great thing about PDFs is that most people can read them, they can’t be edited and they look like the original document. PDFs are common on the web: you can easily put a link to a PDF file on your website. But not all programs have features for converting documents to PDF, or saving documents to PDF. There are many different uses for PDF files. PDF is also a handy format for archiving files once they are complete. For example, convert invoices to PDF files and upload them to your online accounting software to have copies that can be opened by anyone, anywhere but cannot be edited. You’ll find that there are lots of plugins and online applications for converting documents to PDF. GroupDocs makes sure that the converted document looks like the original and lets you convert to other formats too.

3. A picture of a document would look good on your website – DOC to JPG

So, you have a website and you’ve created a brand new brochure. You want it on the website, but not as a set of pages, the way I descried in point 2 above. Instead, you want a picture of the attractive cover on your website. People can then click the image to download a PDF you prepared earlier. With GroupDocs, you can convert documents to a variety of different formats, including images. From DOC and DOCX you can convert to JPG, a popular online format. If you want to use a different image you can convert the JPG to PNG or GIF both popular internet image formats.

4. A slide in one of your presentations would look good in another document – PPTX to JPG

When you have worked hard to make a great presentation, you’ll want to re-use the information and graphics on the slides. As with Microsoft Word documents, you can convert the slides in a presentation to images which you can then use in other presentations, documents or websites.

5. Someone sends you a compressed Word document and you can’t open it – DOCX to DOC

Microsoft Office 2007 introduced DOCX, their default document format, in 2006. Five years later, not everyone has a word processing program that can work with DOCX, but need DOC or other types of files. Someone who can save to DOCX can also save to DOC. But if you get a DOCX and you need DOC, what do you do? You can ask the originator to save the document in the right format and send it back to you. Or you can upload the file to GroupDocs and convert it to DOC – or any other format that you want.

6. You’re working with someone who doesn’t have Microsoft Office – DOC to ODT

Microsoft Office is almost – but not quite – everywhere. There’s a similar product called OpenOffice (LibreOffice is based on the same core) that is free and quite popular. The default format for OpenOffice’s word processing application is ODT (open document). GroupDocs can convert Word documents to a number of different formats, including ODT. Also, be sure to find out how to convert images with GroupDocs Conversion.