Method and apparatus for creating and maintaining graphic representations of documents under a universal format

A document management system for use in a computer system that affords convenient access to documents configured under incompatible formats. The invention allows the graphical depictions of documents configured under a universal format to be stored and maintained in a viewer server that can be accessed by a user on the system. This is accomplished by using a viewer server to extract a graphical image of a document while performing a print operation and storing the image in a separate viewer file. The system can therefore maintain files of a document under its original format and in a separate file under a universal format.