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Last Reviewed:  February 23, 2023

Running FileConvert as a Service

The most common reason why FileConvert stops converting has to do with running it as a service. A service has limitations that affect FileConvert's ability to access the files. If any of these are true, it's going to affect the service's access:

  • Your files are in secured folders
  • Your files are on a mapped drive
  • You're trying to convert Office files

Fortunately, there are some workarounds.

Office Files

You can't convert Office files, like Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, emails, etc. when running FileConvert as a service. Documents may still get added to the queue, but they will fail to convert.

Mapped Drives

Mapped drives aren't available to a service. So if your job source, destination, backup directory, separator destinations, or separator database directory are on mapped drives, you must change the mapped drive letters to UNC paths.

For example, suppose that you normally access your files at S:\My_Folder. In this example, S: is a mapped drive letter. You need to replace the S: with the network path. Here's how to do that.

  1. Open Windows Explorer
  2. If you don't see your computer contents on the left, click the Navigation Pane button > Navigation Pane
  3. Scroll down until you see your mapped drive

Your mapped drive will look something like this (but the names will be different):

share (\\server) (S:)

You need the first two pieces of information. They give the actual network location of the files – a location you can use instead of the mapped drive letter. Rearrange them like this:

\\server\share\

That is the equivalent of using S:\. Going back to our original example, if you usually access your files at S:\My_Folder, you can also access them at \\server\share\My_Folder. The second one is called a UNC path ("Universal Naming Convention path").

Anywhere that you're using mapped drive letters in FileConvert, you must use the UNC path instead:

  • Input (source) paths
  • Output paths
  • Backup paths
  • Separator paths
  • Separator database location

NOTE: This only applies to mapped drives. You can still refer to local physical drives by drive letter (like the C:\ drive).

User Permissions

A service has no credentials or permissions on your network. In other words, if you have security settings that only allow certain users to access the drive or folder, FileConvert's service will not have access.

In this case, you'll need to run your service under the credentials of a specific user who has access:

  1. Go to the Windows Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services
  2. Right-click on the FileConvert Monitor list item and select Properties
  3. Go to the Log On tab
  4. Select This Account for the Log On As option
  5. Enter the username and password
  6. Click Apply and OK

You may need to stop and restart the service for the change to take effect. If the service won't start, you entered the username/password incorrectly.

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