Changing the file type or format of a document (let's say from RTF to DOC, or from TXT to DOCX) is easily done with the "File | Save As..." command of Atlantis. You only need to choose a different document format in the "Save as type" box of the "Save Document As" dialog. This requires only a few mouse clicks and is OK if you want to change the format of only a few documents. But when you have many more documents to convert (sometimes hundreds or even thousands of them), the "Save As" method is inadequate. Things might take hours to complete and not be fail-safe (you might overlook some of the documents or convert them to a wrong format).

This is when you could use the "Batch conversion" feature available under the "File | Save Special" menu. It displays a dialog allowing you to convert any number of documents with a few mouse clicks:

First, choose the format(s) of the documents to convert (you can select several file types together):

Then specify the location of the source documents (click the "Browse..." button):

And finally choose the target format and folder for the converted files:

Note that the Atlantis "Batch conversion" command always overrides existing files of same name if any. So we suggest you use or create an empty folder to host the converted files. But of course, you can choose any non-empty folder if you don't mind overwriting existing files.

Also note that the source and target folders can be identical. In that case the converted files are placed alongside the source files.

When the "include subfolders" box is checked, and the source folder does have subfolders, Atlantis

• converts all documents found in the source folder and all its subfolders,
• and places the converted files in the target folder, using mirror subfolders with corresponding names.

The "Batch conversion" command can be used to convert documents between the standard document formats supported by Atlantis (RTF, DOC, DOCX, ODT, COD and TXT). But it can also be used to convert documents to the EPUB format (the eBook format supported by Atlantis). You only need to choose "EPUB" as the target format in the drop-down.

See also...