Short answer: reaConverter automates file conversion through three layers that share the same settings engine. The Windows context menu handles ad-hoc jobs, Watch Folders convert files the moment they land in a monitored directory, and the command-line tool (cons_rcp.exe) runs scheduled and scripted jobs. Watch Folders run as a Windows service and require local storage. The command line reads network paths without restriction. All three read the same .cfg configuration files and .act action files, so a workflow you design once in the interface runs identically everywhere. Watch Folders and the command line require reaConverter Pro.

This guide covers how those layers fit together, how to build a pipeline that survives unattended operation, and six complete workflows you can adapt.

What counts as an automated conversion workflow

A conversion workflow is automated when three conditions hold:

1. The trigger is not a person. A file arriving, a clock reaching 02:00, or another program calling an API starts the job.
2. The settings are stored, not retyped. Output format, quality, resize rules, naming, and destination live in a file, not in someone’s memory.
3. Failures are visible. The job reports what it processed, what it skipped, and why.

Most conversion setups get the first condition right and ignore the other two. That is why they break quietly. The sections below treat all three as part of the design.

The three automation layers

These layers are not alternatives so much as stages. A typical production setup uses two or three at once. A common pattern: the command line converts a historical backlog over a weekend, a Watch Folder handles new files from that point on, and the context menu stays available for one-off exceptions.

Choosing a layer

• New files arrive continuously and unpredictably → Watch Folder.
• Files arrive in known batches at known times → command line plus Windows Task Scheduler.
• A one-time archive migration → command line.
• A person decides which files to convert → context menu.
• Source files live on a network share → command line on a schedule, or reaConverter installed on the file server itself.

Configuration files: the portable unit of a workflow

Before touching automation, build the job in the reaConverter interface and save it. This is the step that makes everything else reproducible.

Configuration file (.cfg) stores conversion settings: output format and its format-specific options, destination folder, file naming rules, and post-conversion file handling. Create it with Menu → Save configuration as.

Action file (.act) stores the editing operations applied during conversion: resize, crop, rotate, watermark, color adjustments, and the rest. Create it from the Image editing tab using Save actions to file as.

The split matters. A .cfg answers “what format, where does it go, what is it called.” An .act answers “what happens to the content on the way.” Keeping them separate means you can pair one action file with several configurations, for example the same watermark and resize applied to both a WebP web output and a TIFF archive output.

Both file types load into Watch Folder setup and both can be passed to the command line:

cons_rcp.exe config.cfg actions.act -f file1.jpg file2.png file3.tiff

Practical convention: keep these files in a version-controlled folder alongside your scripts, named for the workflow rather than the format. supplier-photos-web.cfg tells a colleague more in six months than webp85.cfg does.

Layer 1: context menu conversions

Integrating reaConverter with the Windows context menu turns any selection in Explorer into a conversion job. Select files or a folder, right-click, and convert with your saved settings.

Windows 11 hides third-party entries behind Show more options, which adds a click. For staff who convert dozens of files a day, that friction is a real cost, and it is usually the point at which a Watch Folder becomes the better answer.

The context menu remains valuable as the escape hatch in an automated shop. When a file arrives outside the normal channel, someone can convert it correctly without needing access to scripts.

Layer 2: Watch Folders

A Watch Folder is an ordinary Windows folder that reaConverter monitors. Any file placed there is converted using stored settings and written wherever you specify, with no interaction.

Watch Folders run as a Windows service that uses the same conversion engine as the main application. The reaConverter window does not need to stay open, and nobody needs to be logged in. You configure a Watch Folder once through the interface, close the program, and conversions keep happening.

Watch Folders require local storage

A Watch Folder must point at a volume local to the machine running reaConverter. Network locations do not work, whether you address them as \\fileserver\incoming\ or through a mapped drive letter, because Windows does not deliver file system change notifications across SMB the way it does for local disks. A Watch Folder aimed at a share will sit there quietly and never fire.

This is a topology constraint rather than a dead end. Two ways around it:

• Install reaConverter on the machine that owns the storage. The folder is local to that server even though everyone else reaches it as a share. For engineering and document control this is usually the right answer anyway, since the files already live on a file server.
• Poll the share with a scheduled command-line job instead. cons_rcp.exe reads UNC paths without restriction. Running it on a short repeating interval reproduces most of what a Watch Folder does, at the cost of restructuring the folders into a queue. This is covered in full under Polling a network folder below.

Enabling and creating a Watch Folder

Open reaConverter, go to Menu → Watch folders, and toggle the switch ON. Click Add new folder to start the setup wizard.

Step 1: select the folder to monitor. Drag a folder onto the wizard or browse to it. Two options shape the scope:

• Read subfolders monitors the entire tree below the selected folder. Use this when incoming files are organized by project, client, or date.
• Process all files without filtering converts everything that appears. Turn it off to define file masks and exclusions on the next screen.

File masks accept both wildcards and regular expressions:

Regular expression masks are the feature that makes Watch Folders viable in engineering and document control environments, where filename structure carries meaning and only approved revisions should be processed.

There is a shortcut worth knowing: the reaConverter icon button in the bottom-left corner of the wizard loads your current conversion settings from the main interface, so you do not have to rebuild them inside the wizard.

Step 2: select where results are saved. Three options:

• Same as source folder writes converted files next to the originals. reaConverter excludes the files it creates from further processing, so this does not cause a conversion loop.
• Subfolder of source folder creates a subfolder such as Converted inside each source folder. Combined with Read subfolders, this preserves your directory structure while keeping originals and outputs separate. This is the safest default for most workflows.
• Following folder sends everything to one destination folder regardless of where it came from.

Step 3: saving settings. Choose the output format under Save files as and open the gear icon for format-specific settings such as quality and compression. Apply editing operations with Load actions file by pointing at a saved .act. Enable Create log file to generate a text record of every conversion.

Click Create Watch folder to activate it. The master switch under Menu → Watch folders stops every Watch Folder at once, which is the fastest way to halt automatic processing while you investigate something.

Turning on Create log file is not optional

For any Watch Folder that runs unattended, enable the log. A Watch Folder that silently stops processing a subset of files looks identical to one working correctly, right up until someone downstream notices a gap weeks later. The log is the only cheap way to answer “did this file get converted, and when.”

Running several Watch Folders

Create one Watch Folder per workflow rather than one folder with complex rules. A folder that resizes marketing images, a second that produces PDF issue sets, and a third that generates archive TIFFs are easier to reason about, easier to hand to a colleague, and easier to disable individually when something goes wrong.

File management after conversion

reaConverter can move or delete source files once they are processed successfully. Configure this in Menu → Saving Settings → File options before creating the Watch Folder, or include it in the .cfg you load.

Moving processed originals to an archive folder is almost always better than deleting them, and it has a second benefit: the monitored folder stays empty, so at a glance you can tell whether anything is stuck.

Layer 3: the command line

reaConverter Pro installs a command-line tool named cons_rcp.exe in the program folder. It exposes the full conversion and editing feature set through parameters, which makes it the right layer for scheduled jobs, server-side processing, and any workflow that has to be scripted.

Basic syntax

Convert a single file:

cons_rcp.exe -s "C:\input.jpg" -o "C:\output.png"

Convert a folder:

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "C:\input\" -source_ext heic -dest_path "C:\output\" -dest_ext jpg

Convert with an editing action applied:

cons_rcp.exe -s "C:\input.jpg" -o "C:\output.webp" -resize 500x300px qh

Use saved settings instead of long parameter lists:

cons_rcp.exe config.cfg actions.act -f file1.jpg file2.png file3.tiff

Parameter rules are simple. Parameters begin with -, values follow the parameter they belong to, a parameter can take several values separated by spaces, and order does not matter. Quote any path containing spaces.

A note on line continuation. The multi-line examples below use the caret ^, which is Command Prompt and batch file syntax. In PowerShell the continuation character is the backtick ` instead. Pasting a caret-continued command into PowerShell silently runs only the first line, which looks like reaConverter ignoring your parameters.

Workflow parameters worth knowing

The full parameter list covers hundreds of format-specific options. These are the ones that shape automation behavior rather than output quality:

Two parameters turn a folder-wide command into an incremental one. -file_age restricts the job by age, so -file_age 0 converts today’s arrivals and -file_age 1 covers the last day. This is the shortest path to a nightly job that does not reprocess the whole archive, and it needs no state of your own.

Read the parameter literally: it selects by creation date, not by last modified date. For a folder that receives files, those are effectively the same thing, because Windows stamps a fresh creation time on a file copied or moved into a new location. For a folder where files are edited in place, they are not the same thing at all, and -file_age will not see yesterday’s edit to a file created last year.

-use_file_list is the more general tool. A script decides which files qualify, writes their full paths to a plain text file, and reaConverter converts exactly those. Any rule you can express in PowerShell becomes a conversion filter, which matters when age alone is not the right test.

Two further mechanisms cover the rest. -overwrite 0 skips any file whose output already exists, so rerunning a job over a large folder only fills the gaps. -move_files empties the source folder as it succeeds, so whatever remains is by definition unprocessed.

Silent execution and logging

Suppress the window for scheduled tasks:

cons_rcp.exe [parameters] /hide

Capture output to a log file with standard redirection:

cons_rcp.exe "C:\config.cfg" "C:\actions.act" > "C:\logs\nightly.txt"

Append rather than overwrite with >> if you want a running history. Rotate these logs, or a busy pipeline will produce a file nobody can open.

Return codes

cons_rcp.exe sets an exit code that your script should check:

Code 8 is the one that matters most in production. It means the job ran and partially succeeded, which is exactly the failure mode that goes unnoticed without explicit handling.

A minimal batch wrapper:

@echo off
setlocal
set LOG=C:\logs\convert_%date:~-4%%date:~3,2%%date:~0,2%.txt

"C:\Program Files\reaConverter\cons_rcp.exe" ^
  -source_folder "D:\incoming\" -source_ext tif -file_age 0 ^
  -dest_path "D:\published\" -dest_ext pdf ^
  -move_unprocessed_files 1 -move_unprocessed_files_folder "D:\quarantine\" ^
  /hide >> "%LOG%" 2>&1

if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 exit /b 0
if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 8 (
  echo PARTIAL FAILURE, check quarantine >> "%LOG%"
  powershell -Command "Send-MailMessage -To 'ops@example.com' -Subject 'Conversion partial failure' -Body 'See %LOG%' -SmtpServer 'smtp.example.com' -From 'jobs@example.com'"
  exit /b 8
)
echo FAILED with code %ERRORLEVEL% >> "%LOG%"
exit /b %ERRORLEVEL%

Scheduling with Windows Task Scheduler

Four settings decide whether a scheduled conversion job works reliably:

1. Run whether user is logged on or not. Otherwise the task waits for a session that may never exist on a server.
2. A service account with explicit permissions on the source, destination, quarantine, and log folders. Most first-run failures on scheduled conversion tasks are permission failures, not conversion failures.
3. UNC paths, not mapped drives. Mapped drive letters belong to interactive sessions and will not exist for a task running without one. Write \\fileserver\projects\incoming\ rather than P:\incoming\. This applies to command-line jobs, which handle network paths fine. Watch Folders are the opposite case and need local storage.
4. Start in set to the folder containing your script, so relative paths behave.

Polling a network folder

Watch Folders cannot monitor a share, but a scheduled command-line job can poll one. Run cons_rcp.exe against the share on a short repeating interval and you get the same outcome by a different route: files converted shortly after they arrive, with no one watching.

The trade is that the folder stops being a location and becomes a queue. A Watch Folder tracks which files it has already seen. A polling job has no memory, so every run would reconvert everything unless processed files leave. Moving them out is what supplies the state:

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "\\fileserver\incoming\" -source_ext tif ^
  -dest_path "\\fileserver\converted\" -dest_ext pdf ^
  -move_files 1 -move_files_folder "\\fileserver\done\" ^
  -move_unprocessed_files 1 -move_unprocessed_files_folder "\\fileserver\failed\" ^
  /hide

One folder becomes four: incoming, converted, done, failed. Incoming is empty whenever the queue is caught up, which is a genuinely better operational signal than anything a Watch Folder gives you.

Four settings make the difference between this working and this hurting:

Do not start a new instance. In the task’s Settings tab, set the behavior for an already-running task to Do not start a new instance. Without it, a run that takes longer than the interval overlaps with the next one and two processes fight over the same files.

Quarantine is mandatory, not optional. In a nightly job, a file that always fails wastes one attempt per day. In a job polling every minute, it fails 1440 times a day, and each attempt reopens it across the network. -move_unprocessed_files is what turns a poison file from a hot loop into a single entry in a folder someone checks.

Partial copies get much more likely. A large file arriving over the network exists in the folder before the copy finishes, and a fast poll will find it mid-write. Have the sender write to a staging folder on the same share and rename into the queue, since a rename within a volume is atomic. If you cannot control the sender, -file_size_more and -check_files reduce the damage but do not eliminate it.

The floor is one minute. Task Scheduler’s repetition interval bottoms out at one minute in the interface, with a duration of Indefinitely. That is fast enough for nearly every workflow. If you genuinely need seconds, do not fight the scheduler: write a small loop script that sleeps and calls cons_rcp.exe, and register that as a single task triggered at startup.

Expect return code 7, no files to convert, on most runs. It means the queue was empty, which is the normal state. Treat 7 as success in any alerting you build, or you will alert constantly.

Six workflows you can adapt

Each of these follows the same template: what triggers it, what it produces, and how it is configured.

1. Nightly DWG issue sets for document control

Situation. An engineering team saves drawings throughout the day. Document control needs a PDF of every drawing revised that day, delivered to a review folder each morning, without an AutoCAD seat on the server.

Trigger. Windows Task Scheduler at 02:00. The drawings live on a share, so this is a command-line job rather than a Watch Folder.

Produces. One dated folder of PDFs per night, mirroring the project directory structure.

Command. PowerShell, because selecting yesterday’s revisions is a filtering problem before it is a conversion problem:

$stamp = Get-Date -Format "yyyy-MM-dd"
$list  = "C:\jobs\dwg_today.lst"

Get-ChildItem "\\eng\projects\" -Recurse -Filter *.dwg |
  Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -gt (Get-Date).AddDays(-1) } |
  Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName |
  Set-Content -Encoding ASCII $list

& "C:\Program Files\reaConverter\cons_rcp.exe" `
  -use_file_list $list `
  -dest_path "\\eng\review\$stamp\" -dest_ext pdf `
  -dxf_dwg_layout 1 -pdf_paper 12 `
  -save_path 1 -save_path_option 1 `
  -move_unprocessed_files 1 -move_unprocessed_files_folder "\\eng\review\_failed\" `
  /hide *>> "\\eng\logs\dwg_nightly.txt"

Notes. Filtering on LastWriteTime is the point. Document control asks for drawings revised yesterday, and a drawing revised yesterday was very likely created two years ago, so any rule based on creation date misses exactly the files that matter. Build the format date string yourself rather than using %DATE%, whose output contains slashes on most locales and is not a legal path component. -dxf_dwg_layout 1 outputs model space only, which is usually what reviewers want. -save_path 1 reproduces the project folder structure inside the dated review folder, so reviewers navigate a layout they already know.

Why not -file_age. -file_age 1 is a much shorter way to say “recent”, and for most incoming-folder workflows it is the right tool. It does not fit here because it selects on creation date, and drawings under revision are edited in place: the file was created when the project started and only its modified date moves. There is a second, less obvious reason. NTFS carries the original creation timestamp forward when an application saves by writing a temporary file and renaming it over the original, which is exactly how many CAD and office applications write. Even a save that replaces the file wholesale can keep the old creation date.

If drawings instead arrive in the folder as fresh copies from elsewhere, the constraint disappears and the whole script collapses to -source_folder "\\\\eng\\projects\\" -source_ext dwg -read_subfolders 1 -file_age 1.

2. CAD handoff for CNC and non-Autodesk partners

Situation. Partners and fabrication shops need DXF. Designers work in DWG. Nobody wants to remember to export.

Trigger. Watch Folder on D:\shares\handoff\, a local path on the file server, which designers reach as \\eng\handoff\. reaConverter is installed on the server itself, because a Watch Folder cannot monitor a share from another machine. A regex mask means only released revisions convert:

/[A-Z]{4} \d{4}_Rev[A-Z]\.dwg/

Configuration. Output DXF with -dxf_version 4 for AutoCAD 2000 compatibility, which most CNC software reads without complaint. Set -dxf_text 0 to convert text to polygons if the receiving system renders fonts inconsistently, or -dxf_text 1 to keep text editable. Confirm which the partner needs before standardizing.

Notes. The regex mask is what makes this safe. Without it, every working file dropped in the folder becomes a handoff document, and partners end up cutting parts from unreleased geometry.

3. Prepress normalization for a print queue

Situation. Client artwork arrives as RGB JPEG, PDF, AI, and PSD. The RIP wants CMYK TIFF at 300 dpi with a known ICC profile.

Trigger. Scheduled every 15 minutes, or a Watch Folder if P:\ is a local volume on the prepress machine rather than a share.

Produces. RIP-ready CMYK TIFFs, with originals archived and problem files quarantined.

Command.

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "P:\artwork_in\" ^
  -dest_path "P:\rip_queue\" -dest_ext tif ^
  -tif_save_in_cmyk 1 -tif_compression 7 ^
  -dpi_option 2 -dpi_x 300 -dpi_y 300 ^
  -icc_option 3 -icc_file "C:\profiles\ISOcoated_v2.icc" ^
  -adobe_res 300 -adobe_color_res 32 -adobe_aa 1 ^
  -move_files 1 -move_files_folder "P:\artwork_archive\" ^
  -move_unprocessed_files 1 -move_unprocessed_files_folder "P:\artwork_problem\" /hide

Notes. -icc_option 3 assigns the profile, -adobe_res 300 controls the rasterization resolution when reading PDF and AI sources, and -adobe_color_res 32 reads them as CMYK directly. Splitting outputs into an archive folder and a problem folder means the operator’s morning check is a single glance at whether artwork_problem is empty.

4. Scanned document archive to searchable PDF/A

Situation. A backlog of scanned TIFFs from a document imaging project needs to become searchable, standards-compliant PDF/A for long-term retention.

Command.

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "E:\scans\" -source_ext tif -read_subfolders 1 ^
  -dest_path "E:\archive\" -dest_ext pdf ^
  -create_searchable_pdf 1 -searchable_pdf_lang eng ^
  -create_pdf_a 1 -create_linearized_pdf 1 ^
  -skip_blank 1 -skip_blank_accuracy 95 ^
  -save_path 1 -save_path_option 1 ^
  -auto_rotate d -remove_bw_noise 2 b ^
  -check_files 1 /hide > "E:\logs\archive_run.txt"

Notes. -auto_rotate d deskews pages, which measurably improves OCR accuracy on scans fed through a sheet feeder. -remove_bw_noise clears speckle before OCR runs. -skip_blank removes the empty backs of single-sided originals scanned in duplex mode. Run a 200-file sample first and check the text layer before committing the full archive.

5. Multi-frame DICOM to shareable PDF

Situation. A clinic needs to send imaging studies to referring physicians who have no DICOM viewer. Each study should become one PDF containing every frame.

Trigger. Watch Folder on a study export directory, or a command-line job invoked by the export tool.

Command.

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "D:\dicom_export\" -source_ext dcm ^
  -dest_path "D:\referral_pdf\" -dest_ext pdf ^
  -multipage_option 1 -multipage_loading_option 0 ^
  -pdf_compression 6 -pdf_paper 12 ^
  -change_to_gray24 /hide

Notes. -multipage_loading_option 0 reads every frame rather than only the first. -multipage_option 1 keeps each study as its own PDF instead of merging studies together. -pdf_paper 12 uses the original image dimensions, which avoids the letterboxing that fixed paper sizes introduce on non-standard aspect ratios.

This workflow handles format conversion only. Anything involving patient identifiers, retention, or transmission belongs to your clinical information governance process, not to a conversion tool.

6. Supplier photos to web-ready assets

Situation. Suppliers send product photography in whatever their camera or phone produced: JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, occasionally PSD. The web team needs consistent WebP at a fixed maximum dimension, plus thumbnails, plus the originals kept for reprocessing.

Trigger. Watch Folder on D:\marketing\incoming\, local to the machine running reaConverter and published to suppliers as a share. Read subfolders enabled so each supplier keeps their own subfolder.

Produces. A web subfolder beside each supplier’s originals, containing the WebP asset and its thumbnail.

Configuration. Output to Subfolder of source folder named web. Format WebP, quality tuned for your image type. Action file applies -resize 1600x0px qh to cap width while preserving proportions, and -auto_rotate exif so phone photos land right way up. -create_thumbnails 1 with -thumbnails_width 300 produces the listing thumbnails in the same pass. Originals move to an archive folder after processing.

Notes. Generating the thumbnail in the same pass rather than a second job removes an entire class of desynchronization bug, where a product has a full-size image but no thumbnail because the second job failed.

Designing a pipeline that survives unattended operation

The conversion itself is rarely what breaks. These are.

Partially written files. A large file copied over a network appears in the folder before the copy finishes. Have the sending process write to a staging folder on the same volume and then rename or move into the watched folder, since a move within a volume is atomic. If you cannot control the sender, run a scheduled command-line job instead of watching in real time, where -file_age and -file_size_more let you pick up files only after they have settled.

Feedback loops. Writing output into the folder being watched is the classic mistake. reaConverter excludes files it created when you use Same as source folder, but if a separate tool writes into that folder, or if you convert to a format that is also an input format for the same Watch Folder, you can still build a loop. The Subfolder of source folder option avoids the whole category.

Silent partial failures. A run that converts 998 of 1000 files returns code 8 and looks fine in a log nobody reads. Combine -move_unprocessed_files with a quarantine folder and check whether that folder is empty. An empty folder is a much clearer signal than a log line.

Name collisions. Different source formats converging on one output format collide: drawing.dwg and drawing.dxf both become drawing.pdf. Decide explicitly with -overwrite, and use -file_name_mask_suffix to disambiguate when both outputs must survive.

Permissions. Scheduled tasks run as a service account. That account needs read on the source, write on the destination, write on quarantine, and write on the log path. Test by running the exact command as that account before scheduling it.

Idempotency. Ask what happens if the same file is processed twice. In most workflows the answer should be “the same output, overwritten harmlessly.” If reprocessing produces duplicates or double-applied watermarks, redesign before going live rather than after.

Capacity planning

Conversion throughput varies by orders of magnitude across formats. A 2 MB JPEG resize and a 40 MB DWG raster render are not comparable operations, and no general number is useful.

Measure instead. Take 100 files representative of your real input mix, time a single run, and extrapolate. Then apply these adjustments:

• Network storage is frequently the bottleneck rather than the CPU. If sources sit on a share, test with local copies to see how much of your runtime is transfer.
• -temp_folder pointed at a local SSD helps significantly for formats that stage large intermediate data, particularly PDF, PSD, and large CAD files.
• -cpu_usage lets a background job coexist with interactive work. Set -cpu_usage 1 for jobs running during business hours and 3 for overnight windows.
• Splitting by subfolder across several parallel invocations scales better than one process for very large backlogs, provided your storage keeps up.

For a large historical migration, run the backlog once from the command line and set up a Watch Folder for the ongoing stream. Trying to push a 50,000-file backlog through a Watch Folder works, but it gives you no progress visibility and no easy way to pause.

Frequently asked questions

Can reaConverter run conversions on a Windows Server without a logged-in user? Yes. Use the command-line tool with the /hide parameter and schedule it through Windows Task Scheduler with “Run whether user is logged on or not” enabled. Grant the service account permissions on all source, destination, and log paths, and use UNC paths rather than mapped drive letters.

Does automated conversion require an internet connection? No. reaConverter processes files locally on your machine. Files never leave your hardware, which is what makes it usable for medical imaging, engineering drawings, and other material that cannot be uploaded to a web service.

Which reaConverter edition includes automation features? Watch Folders and the command-line tool are reaConverter Pro features. Context menu integration is available more broadly.

How do I convert only files added or changed since the last run? Four approaches, in increasing order of control. -file_age is the simplest: -file_age 0 selects files created today and -file_age 1 covers the last day. -overwrite 0 skips any file whose output already exists, which makes a rerun over a whole folder fill only the gaps. -move_files empties the source folder as conversions succeed, so anything left is unprocessed by definition. When age is not the right test, have a script write the qualifying paths to a text file and pass it with -use_file_list. The usual reason is that -file_age measures creation date, so files edited in place keep their original timestamp and stay invisible to it.

Can one Watch Folder produce two different outputs from the same file? Not in a single Watch Folder. Create a second Watch Folder pointing at the same source directory with different saving settings, or use a command-line job with two invocations. The thumbnail parameters are an exception: -create_thumbnails through -create_thumbnails_5 generate up to five additional sized outputs in the same pass.

What happens if a file fails to convert? The job continues with the remaining files and returns exit code 8 to indicate that not everything was converted. Set -move_unprocessed_files 1 with a quarantine folder so failed files are separated for review rather than left in place where they will be retried indefinitely.

Can a Watch Folder monitor a network share? No. Watch Folders require storage local to the machine running reaConverter, because Windows does not deliver file system change notifications across SMB. Two workarounds: install reaConverter on the server that owns the storage, so the folder is local to it, or poll the share with a scheduled cons_rcp.exe job using -move_files to move processed files out of the queue.

Can I apply different settings to different file types in one folder? Yes, by creating several Watch Folders on the same directory with different file masks, or by running several command-line invocations with different -source_ext values. Masks accept regular expressions, so filename conventions can drive routing.

Does reaConverter preserve metadata during automated conversion? Use -copy_exif 1 and -copy_iptc 1 to carry EXIF and IPTC data to the output, and -icc_option 2 to retain the ICC profile. -same_date 1 keeps the original file timestamp on the converted file, which matters for archive workflows where the file date is the record date.

Where to go next

Build your first automated workflow in this order:

1. Configure the conversion in the reaConverter interface and verify the output on a handful of real files.
2. Save it as a .cfg, and save any editing operations as an .act.
3. Choose your trigger: a Watch Folder for continuous arrivals, a scheduled command-line job for batches.
4. Add a quarantine folder and enable logging before the job goes live rather than after the first incident.
5. Run it against a copy of real data for a week before pointing it at production directories.

Related guides in this knowledge base cover Watch Folders, command-line usage, and automation in more depth. Full parameter references are available for the command-line interface, Watch Folders, and configuration and action files.

Convert a whole Outlook PST mailbox to PDF, attachments and all

A .pst file is a sealed box. It holds years of email, often with the important material buried in attachments, and it only opens cleanly in Microsoft Outlook. The moment someone outside that world needs the data, the problems start. A lawyer asks for a custodian’s mailbox for review. Compliance needs a five-year retention copy in a format auditors can actually read. An employee leaves and IT has to archive their inbox before the license is reclaimed. In every one of these cases, “here is a PST file” is not a useful answer.

The standard workaround is painful. You open Outlook, print each message to PDF one at a time, then chase down every attachment by hand and save it next to the email so nothing gets lost. For a mailbox with a few thousand messages, that is days of work, and it is exactly the kind of manual process where attachments quietly go missing.

reaConverter 8 now converts PST to PDF directly, with no Outlook required. More importantly, it does something most PST converters cannot: it keeps the original attachments as real, openable files embedded inside the PDF. Convert a mailbox with hundreds of emails into a single PDF, open it in Acrobat Reader, and the Attachments panel appears on the side. Every original file is right there to open or save.

Short answer: Install reaConverter 8, add your .pst files, choose PDF as the output format, enable the option to embed attachments, and click Convert. reaConverter reads the PST without Outlook, writes the email text into the PDF, and stores each attachment as an embedded file you can open from the PDF’s Attachments panel. It runs as a batch, so an entire mailbox becomes one searchable document in a single pass.

Why convert PST to PDF?

PST (Personal Storage Table) is Microsoft Outlook’s local data format. It stores messages, folders, and attachments in one proprietary container. That design is fine while you live inside Outlook, and a real obstacle the moment you need to share, archive, or review that mail anywhere else.

PDF solves the parts PST gets in the way of:

• Universal access. Anyone can open a PDF, on any device, with no Outlook license and no special viewer.
• Long-term archival. PDF, and PDF/A in particular, is a recognized preservation format. PST is tied to a specific application and its versions.
• Search and review. The email text becomes selectable, searchable text inside the document.
• A fixed, shareable record. A PDF looks the same to everyone who opens it, which matters when the document is evidence or a formal record.

Common situations where teams need PST to PDF:

• E-discovery and litigation. Counsel needs custodian mailboxes in a reviewable, productionable format, with attachments intact.
• Compliance and retention. Regulators and internal policy require email kept in a stable, readable format for a set number of years.
• Offboarding and mailbox archiving. A departing employee’s inbox has to be preserved before the account is decommissioned.
• Email migration. Moving off Exchange or consolidating accounts, where legacy mail needs a portable archive.
• Public records and FOIA responses. Email has to be handed to people who do not run Outlook.
• Personal backup. Keeping a clean, openable copy of your own mail outside the application that created it.

The recurring failure point in all of these is the attachment. A contract PDF, a signed agreement, a spreadsheet of numbers: that is often the actual evidence, not the email body. Many PST converters either drop attachments, flatten them into flat images you can no longer use, or scatter them into a separate folder that loses its link to the message. reaConverter keeps each attachment as the original file, embedded in the same PDF as the email it arrived with.

PST vs PDF, quick reference

What makes reaConverter’s PST to PDF different

Two things set this conversion apart from the usual “print each email” approach.

Many emails become one PDF. Point reaConverter at a PST and it can walk every message and write the whole mailbox into a single, paginated PDF. The email text goes in as real text, so the document is searchable end to end.

Attachments stay as files, not pictures. This is the part that matters for legal and compliance work. Instead of rasterizing a spreadsheet into a screenshot, reaConverter embeds the original file inside the PDF. Open the result in Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Attachments panel (the paperclip icon) opens automatically. Each attachment can be opened in its native application or saved back out, exactly as it was sent. You get one self-contained document that still carries the original evidence inside it, which keeps your record intact rather than degraded.

Why not just use Outlook’s Print to PDF?

If you only need to save one or two emails, Outlook’s built-in Microsoft Print to PDF does the job. The trouble starts past that. Outlook prints the message body and nothing else, so attachments are dropped. There is no batch option, so a mailbox of a few thousand messages means a few thousand manual prints. And it only works while Outlook is installed and the mailbox is loaded, which rules out reading an archived .pst on a machine that has no Outlook on it at all.

reaConverter approaches the same task from the file rather than the application. It opens the .pst directly, converts the whole mailbox in one pass, and keeps every attachment as an openable file inside the PDF.

For a handful of messages, Outlook is enough. For a mailbox you need to archive, hand to a lawyer, or keep for compliance, reaConverter turns a multi-day manual task into a single batch job.

What you’ll need

• reaConverter 8. The Standard edition is enough for GUI batch conversion. Watch Folders and command-line automation require Pro. See the PST to PDF conversion page for an overview of what is supported.
• Your .pst files. reaConverter reads PST directly, both the older ANSI and the modern Unicode variants.
• No Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, or internet connection. Conversion runs entirely offline on your own hardware, which is what you want when the mail is sensitive.

Method 1 — Convert PST to PDF in the GUI

This is the fastest way to convert one or several PST files interactively.

Step 1. Add your PST files

Launch reaConverter and load your mailboxes. You can:

• Drag and drop .pst files or whole folders from Windows Explorer.
• Use the Add Files or Add Folder buttons on the toolbar.
• Right-click a PST file in Explorer and choose Convert from the context menu.

reaConverter opens the PST and reads its messages directly. No Outlook process is launched at any point.

Step 2. Choose PDF as the output format

In the bottom panel, set Save as → PDF. You do not need to configure anything for the attachments: reaConverter embeds each email’s original attachments into the PDF automatically. That default behavior is what populates the Attachments panel when you open the file in Acrobat.

The gear icon next to PDF opens the PDF format settings. There are no email-specific options here, but a couple are worth knowing for an email archive. Create PDF/A document produces a preservation-grade file for long-term or compliance storage, and the Document Open password and permissions options let you lock down a mailbox that holds sensitive material.

To combine an entire PST into one continuous PDF instead of a separate file per message, open Saving settings (the gear on the far right, next to Convert) and go to the Multipage files tab. By default reaConverter keeps each item separate (“Convert each multipage file to another”). Switch to Save all processed files to one file to merge the whole mailbox into a single document.

Step 3. Set the destination folder

Choose where the converted PDF should be saved. You can keep the source folder structure, save everything to one flat folder, or use reaConverter’s subfolder naming options.

Step 4. Click Convert

Hit Convert and reaConverter processes the mailbox. The conversion log shows progress message by message. When it finishes, click Show converted files to jump straight to the output folder.

Step 5. Open the result and check the attachments

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader. The email text is laid out as searchable text, and the Attachments panel opens on the left. Click the paperclip icon if it is collapsed. From there you can open any original attachment or save it back to disk.

Other formats you can convert PST to

PST to PDF is the headline, but the same engine handles the rest of reaConverter’s catalog. Once a PST is loaded, you can convert its content to other formats too, for example rendering messages to JPG, PNG, or TIFF when you need image output instead of a document. All of it runs as a batch, so whole folders of mailboxes go through in one pass.

Method 2 — Watch Folders (fully automated)

Watch Folders turn any Windows directory into a self-converting hot folder. Drop a PST in, and a PDF appears in the output directory with no clicks. This suits recurring archival jobs: an offboarding folder where IT drops departed-employee exports, or a compliance inbox that needs a PDF copy of every PST that lands in it.

How to set it up

1. Open reaConverter and go to Menu → Watch Folders → Add new folder…
2. Set the Source folder, the directory reaConverter will monitor, for example C:\Mail\PST_inbox\.
3. Set the Output folder, for example C:\Mail\PDF_archive\.
4. Choose PDF as the output format and enable embed attachments and merge-to-single-PDF as in Method 1.
5. Click Start Watching.

From then on, every PST that lands in the source folder is converted automatically and the PDF is written to the output folder. reaConverter keeps running in the background and can watch several folder pairs at once.

Tip: Combine the “Subfolder of source folder” output option with “Read subfolders” to mirror your directory structure while keeping originals separate from the converted PDFs.

For a full walkthrough, see the dedicated guide: A Beginner-Friendly Guide to reaConverter’s Watch Folders.

Method 3 — Command-line conversion

reaConverter Pro includes cons_rcp.exe, a full command-line tool that accepts the same settings as the GUI. It can be driven from batch scripts, PowerShell, Task Scheduler, or any automated pipeline.

Convert a single PST to one PDF with attachments

cons_rcp.exe -s "C:\Mail\custodian.pst" -o "C:\Output\custodian.pdf"

Batch convert a folder of PST files

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "C:\Mail\" -source_ext pst -dest_path "C:\Output\" -dest_ext pdf

This converts every .pst file in the source folder, merges each mailbox into its own PDF, and embeds the attachments.

Include subfolders and run silently

cons_rcp.exe -source_folder "C:\Mail\" -source_ext pst -dest_path "C:\Output\" -dest_ext pdf -read_subfolders 1 /hide

Add /hide to suppress the console window for scheduled tasks, and append > "C:\Logs\pst_to_pdf.txt" to capture the conversion log. Saved as a .bat file and pointed at Task Scheduler, this becomes a nightly, hands-off PST archival job.

For the full reference, see Command-line Interface for Developers.

Troubleshooting

I don’t see the attachments in the PDF. Make sure you opened the file in a reader that supports embedded files, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, and that the Attachments panel (the paperclip icon) is expanded. Some lightweight or in-browser PDF viewers do not display embedded files even when they are present. The data is in the PDF either way, so reopening it in Acrobat will show it.

The PST is very large. Mailboxes that run to many gigabytes take longer and use more memory. Convert during off-hours, or split the work across folders and let Watch Folders or a scheduled command-line job process them in sequence.

The PST is password protected. Remove the password in Outlook before converting, or supply the credentials if your workflow allows it. A protected container cannot be read without its password.

Old ANSI PST from a legacy system. reaConverter handles both ANSI and Unicode PST, so older Outlook archives are supported alongside modern ones.

Which reaConverter edition do I need?

Frequently asked questions

Do I need Microsoft Outlook to convert PST to PDF? No. reaConverter reads the PST format directly and does not launch or require Outlook, Exchange, or any internet connection. Everything runs offline on your machine.

Are email attachments preserved in the PDF? Yes. When you enable the embed-attachments option, each email’s original attachments are stored inside the PDF as openable files. In Adobe Acrobat Reader they appear in the Attachments panel, ready to open or save in their native format.

Can I convert a whole mailbox into a single PDF? Yes. The merge option combines every message in a PST into one continuous, searchable PDF, rather than producing a separate file per email.

Is this suitable for e-discovery and legal review? PST to PDF with embedded attachments produces a self-contained, searchable record that keeps the original files intact, which is what review and production workflows need. It runs offline, so sensitive mail never leaves your hardware.

Can I convert many PST files at once? Yes. reaConverter is a batch converter. Load a folder of PST files and it processes all of them in one pass. With Pro you can also automate the job through Watch Folders or the command line.

Can PST be converted to formats other than PDF? Yes. Besides PDF, you can render PST content to image formats such as JPG, PNG, and TIFF, all in batch.

Does the converted PDF keep the email text as searchable text? Yes. The message body is written as selectable, searchable text, so you can search across the whole archive inside any PDF reader.

Background — why we built this

This feature came from our support inbox, not a roadmap meeting. Over time we kept seeing the same request in different words: people sitting on a PST file that someone else needed, with no clean way to hand it over.

One message summed it up well:

“We have to send a former employee’s mailbox to our lawyers. They don’t use Outlook, and when we print the emails to PDF the attachments get lost. We need one file that has the emails and the actual attachments in it.”

That is the exact gap we set out to close. PST fit naturally into reaConverter’s existing pipeline, so we taught it to read mailboxes, write the message text as real PDF text, and, the part that took the most care, embed each attachment as an openable file inside the same document rather than flattening or dropping it. The result is a single PDF that anyone can open, search, and pull the original files out of, with no Outlook anywhere in the chain.

Conclusion

Converting PST to PDF used to mean opening Outlook and grinding through a mailbox one message at a time, hoping no attachment slipped through. reaConverter replaces that with a batch job: load your PST files, convert to PDF, and get back a searchable document with every original attachment embedded and openable. It works through the GUI for one-off jobs, through Watch Folders for automated archival, and through the command line for scheduled pipelines. No Outlook, no cloud, no lost attachments.

For legal teams, compliance and records staff, IT admins archiving mailboxes, and anyone who needs Outlook mail in a format the rest of the world can actually read, this is the workflow that removes the bottleneck.

Get reaConverter and convert your first PST to PDF in minutes.

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If you run a small engineering or architectural firm, you probably have a folder somewhere on a network drive that everyone calls “the archive.” It holds ten, twenty, sometimes thirty years of DWG and DXF files. And every few weeks, the same thing happens: someone needs to find a specific drawing from 2014, no one remembers the exact filename, and an hour disappears while a designer opens files one by one in AutoCAD trying to recognize them.

The cost of this shows up as billable hours lost to file-by-file searches, wrong revisions attached to client proposals, and tribal knowledge that walks out the door with departing employees. The drawings themselves are valuable assets — years of paid work and reusable detail libraries. Treating them as an opaque pile of files wastes that value every day.

The solution is conceptually simple. Generate a preview image for every CAD file in the archive. Display those previews in Windows Explorer, on an intranet page, or inside a document management system. Suddenly the archive is searchable by eye, and finding old work takes seconds instead of an hour. The hard part is doing it in batch, without buying an AutoCAD license for every employee who might need to look at a drawing.

Why generating DWG previews is harder than it looks

If preview generation is so useful, why doesn’t every firm already have it? Because the obvious solutions all have problems that only become visible after you try them.

The AutoCAD licensing problem

AutoCAD itself can generate thumbnails and previews. So can AutoCAD LT. But an AutoCAD LT subscription runs around 500 USD per seat per year, and that’s only for viewing and basic editing. If only your designers need to actually edit drawings, but five other people in the office occasionally need to look at them, you’re either buying licenses you don’t really need, or those five people keep interrupting the designers.

Autodesk does offer DWG TrueView as a free viewer, and it does add Windows Explorer thumbnails on machines where it’s installed. For a single user this is fine. For automated batch processing across a 40,000-file archive, building previews for a web portal or DMS, or generating previews on a server with no GUI session, it’s the wrong tool.

Why online viewers are off the table for most firms

Cloud CAD viewers such as Autodesk Viewer or DWG FastView are useful for collaboration and file sharing, but they are less practical for large legacy archives.

Many engineering firms cannot freely upload client drawings due to NDAs, internal policies, or industry regulations. In addition, most cloud viewers are designed for opening individual files rather than batch-processing tens of thousands of drawings into a searchable preview library.

For archive management, local batch preview generation is often simpler and easier to maintain.

The “just write a script” trap

The third path most firms consider is writing a script using the AutoCAD .NET API, ODA libraries, or a Python toolchain. This works if you have a developer. Most small firms don’t, and custom scripts tend to break silently when DWG versions change or when someone upgrades the server. Six months later no one remembers how the script works, and the preview pipeline quietly stops producing anything for new files.

What you actually need from a CAD preview workflow

Before picking a tool, it helps to make the requirements explicit. A workable batch CAD preview system for a small firm needs to:

1. Process files in batch, ideally thousands at a time, without manual clicking
2. Run on a standard Windows machine without requiring AutoCAD installation
3. Support DWG, DXF, and ideally older or related formats like DWF, HPGL, and PLT for legacy archives
4. Output common image formats (PNG, JPG) for thumbnails, plus PDF for sharing and SVG for high-quality web previews that scale on screen
5. Automate itself — watch a folder, process new files as they arrive, no scheduled human intervention
6. Handle errors gracefully so one bad file doesn’t stop the whole batch
7. Stay on premises, with files never leaving the company network

This list also functions as a buying checklist. Any tool that can’t tick most of these boxes isn’t really solving the problem; it’s just shifting work around.

How reaConverter handles batch CAD preview generation

reaConverter is a Windows batch file conversion tool that has been developed for over twenty years. It supports more than 800 input and output formats, including the CAD formats that matter for archive work: DWG, DXF, DWF, HPGL, PLT, and several others. For the use case described here, the Pro edition is what you need, because batch automation and watched folders are Pro features.

Download reaConverter Pro

Supported input and output formats

On the input side, reaConverter reads DWG and DXF files from AutoCAD versions going back to early releases, plus DWF, HPGL/2, PLT, and other 2D CAD formats commonly found in legacy archives. This matters more than it sounds. Most archives accumulate files from different CAD tools over the years, and a preview system that only handles current AutoCAD versions leaves a chunk of the archive invisible.

On the output side, you can generate previews in any image format reaConverter supports. For a typical preview workflow, three outputs cover almost everything:

• PNG or JPG thumbnails for Windows Explorer, file managers, and most document management systems
• SVG for web-based preview interfaces where users may want to zoom into the drawing
• PDF for archival and sharing with clients who don’t have CAD software

You can output more than one format from a single conversion job. A common setup generates a small JPG thumbnail and a larger PDF for every DWG, both saved alongside the original.

Automating the workflow

This is where reaConverter Pro earns its keep. There are two automation modes that matter for archive work.

Watched folders monitor a directory continuously. When a new DWG file lands in the folder, reaConverter processes it automatically using a saved conversion profile and writes the output wherever you’ve configured. For an active project archive where designers save new drawings throughout the day, a watched folder means previews appear within seconds of a file being saved, with no scheduled jobs and no human involvement.

Command-line operation runs reaConverter as a CLI tool. This is what you want for the initial bulk conversion of an existing archive, and for any workflow that fits better into Windows Task Scheduler or a server-side script. A nightly job that processes the day’s additions, or a one-off command that converts the entire historical archive over a weekend, both work cleanly from the command line.

Together these two modes cover the realistic shape of an archive: a large historical backlog that needs a one-time bulk conversion, plus a continuous stream of new files that need previews generated as they arrive.

Adding OCR for scanned legacy drawings

There’s a bonus use case worth mentioning, because almost every firm older than fifteen years has it. Somewhere in the archive there are scanned PDFs and TIFFs of paper drawings from the pre-CAD era, or from acquired companies, or from projects where the originals were lost. These files are technically in the archive, but they’re functionally invisible — you can’t search their contents, and visual thumbnails of scanned blueprints often look identical to each other.

reaConverter includes OCR. You can batch-process scanned drawings to extract the text — title blocks, revision tables, notes — and either embed it back into a searchable PDF or output it as a text file alongside the original. Combined with preview generation, this turns a pile of opaque scans into searchable, browsable assets. It’s the same workflow as the DWG preview pipeline, just with a different input type.

Where this approach fits, and where it doesn’t

Honest limitations matter here. A preview system that promises to handle everything will disappoint at the worst possible moment.

reaConverter works well for:

• 2D architectural and engineering drawings (the bulk of most firms’ archives)
• Standard mechanical part drawings and assembly views
• Civil, structural, and electrical drawings
• Mixed archives with multiple CAD formats and legacy scanned documents
• Throughput in the thousands to tens of thousands of files

reaConverter is not the right tool for:

• Very large 3D assemblies — full automotive models, complex aerospace assemblies, large BIM coordination models with millions of polygons. These need a dedicated CAD or visualization platform.
• Drawings that depend heavily on custom AutoCAD object enablers (AutoCAD Architecture, Civil 3D, Plant 3D specialty objects may render in simplified form)
• Drawings with broken or missing xrefs — these will preview, but the preview will be missing the xref content, same as in any non-AutoCAD tool

If your archive is mostly 2D drawings with the occasional 3D model, reaConverter handles the realistic 90% case. If your work is large 3D assemblies, this isn’t the right tool, and that’s worth knowing before you invest setup time.

A practical setup for a 50,000-file CAD archive

Here’s a concrete recipe for a small firm with a multi-year archive that needs preview generation set up in an afternoon.

Step 1: Install reaConverter Pro on a single machine. This can be an existing workstation that’s left on overnight, or a small server. No special hardware is needed for 2D CAD work.

Step 2: Create a conversion profile. Open reaConverter, add a sample DWG file from your archive, and configure the output: typically a 1024×768 JPG thumbnail and a PDF. Save this as a named profile (for example, archive_preview). The profile captures every setting, so subsequent runs are reproducible.

Step 3: Run the initial bulk conversion. Point reaConverter at the root of your archive and let it process everything once. For a 50,000-file archive of typical 2D drawings, plan for this to run overnight or across a weekend depending on the machine. Use the command-line mode if you want to script it or run it on a server.

Typical performance on a mid-range Intel i7 workstation:

• ~3–5 standard 2D DWG previews per second
• ~8–10 hours for a 50,000-file archive
• Typical PNG preview size: ~100–150 KB per drawing

Step 4: Set up a watched folder for ongoing files. Once the historical archive is converted, configure a watched folder on the directory where new drawings are saved. From this point forward, every new DWG that designers save gets a preview generated automatically.

Step 5: Make the previews discoverable. This is where preview output meets your existing infrastructure. The simplest setup just stores PNG thumbnails in a parallel folder structure mirroring the archive, which Windows Explorer can browse directly. More ambitious setups feed the previews into a document management system, an intranet page built on a simple file index, or a tool like Daminion that’s designed for visual file libraries.

The result, after one afternoon of setup and one weekend of bulk processing, is that the whole archive becomes browsable by eye, and stays that way without further intervention.

Frequently asked questions

Does reaConverter require AutoCAD to be installed?

No. reaConverter reads DWG and DXF files natively and does not require AutoCAD, DWG TrueView, or any other Autodesk software to be present.

What CAD formats can reaConverter generate previews from?

The main supported inputs for CAD preview work are DWG, DXF, DWF, HPGL/2, and PLT. The full format list is broader, but those are the ones that matter for typical engineering and architectural archives.

Can reaConverter generate SVG previews of DWG files?

Yes. SVG is among the supported output formats, which makes it useful for web-based preview interfaces where users may want to zoom into the drawing without losing quality.

How does Watch Folder automation actually work?

You configure a folder for reaConverter Pro to monitor. When a file matching your filter appears in that folder, reaConverter applies the conversion profile you’ve assigned and writes the output to the configured destination. The whole process runs in the background and does not require a user to be logged in interactively, depending on how it’s set up to run.

Is there a licensing limit on how many files can be processed?

No. A reaConverter Pro license is a one-time purchase that allows unlimited file processing on the licensed machine. There are no per-file or per-batch fees.

reaConverter Pro is available as a one-time purchase Windows license. For firms maintaining large legacy archives, the time savings are usually immediate.

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