SharePoint Word Automation Services

Question

I have lost 2 hours on issue I have on SharePoint 2016 and not on SharePoint 2019 when using Word Automation Service to convert a word file in pdf. In 2019 I can update the table of contents and this is still navigable (hyperlinks working), but in 2016 the same is not working. I have also tested this with PowerShell script below:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Add-Type -Path 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Office.Word.Server\v4.0_16.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Microsoft.Office.Word.Server.dll'
$jobSettings = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Word.Server.Conversions.ConversionJobSettings
$jobSettings.OutputFormat = "PDF"
$jobSettings.UpdateFields = "true"
$job = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Word.Server.Conversions.ConversionJob("Word Automation Services", $jobSettings)
$job.UserToken = (Get-SPWeb https://mywebsite/sop).CurrentUser.UserToken
$job.AddFile("https://mywebsite/Docs/TestDoc.docx", "https://mywebsite/Docs/TestDoc.pdf")
$job.Start()

I guess that in SP 2019 some unknown bug of 2016 was fixed, someone can explain this?

Answer 1

I answer myself after recent additional investigation. The links in Table of Content are broken if I use:

$jobSettings.UpdateFields = "true"

this should be replaced with: $jobSettings.UpdateFields = "false"

In other words, ConversionJob setting of Word Automation Service seems to have a little bug: if you want TOC of word file is updated before PDF creation, you should set UpdateFields to true, but you lose the links; if you want to have links in TOC, you must accept to lose the update of TOC.

Hope this help someone else!