Acrobat -- Search & Replace Text in Bookmarks

Direct purchase using PayPal ($25 only)!
Using this new script you can search and replace the names of all the bookmarks in a single file, and if you have Acrobat Pro you can run this as an Action (or Batch Sequence) on multiple files, all for the low price of just $25!

Special offer: You can now get all three "Search & Replace Text" fields (for bookmarks, form fields and comments) for just $60, instead of $75! They can be purchased as a pack here.

Using this script is very easy. You just enter the search term and the replace term:

And all of the matching bookmark names are edited.
Before:                              After:

On top of that, you can even use some basic Regular Expression commands, like "\d" for a digit, "\s" for white-spaces, "$" as the beginning of the string and "^" for the end of it, etc.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Validate Required Fields Before Printing or Saving

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!

If you have a form that contain a set of required fields, they are only useful when the user wants to submit the form back to you. But what if you want to use the required feature of these fields when the form is printed as well? Or when the user tries to save it? Until now you couldn't, but with this script it becomes possible.

After running this script on a file, if someone tries to print it without filling in all the required fields, they will receive an error message and the form will print without any of the data in it. The same can be done when the file is saved.
Important: This tool won't prevent the file from being printed or saved entirely. It will just make sure it doesn't print/save with the partial data in it.

Sample files are available here.

For example, here's a standard form with some required fields:

When the user tries to print the form without filling in all the required fields, they receive this message:

The printed form is blank, but the data they already filled-in is not lost! They can continue editing the form, and when all the fields are filled-in properly, the form will print as usual.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Batch Edit Zoom Level in Bookmarks

Direct purchase using PayPal ($50 only)!
Update: You can now test out this tool by downloading this free demo version.
The demo version works exactly like the full version, but it will only process the first 3 (top-level) bookmarks of the first 3 files you select, whereas the full version will process all the bookmarks in an entire folder (and all sub-folders).

With this little yet powerful tool you can edit an entire folder of PDF files within seconds and set all of the zoom level settings in bookmarks actions to one of the following options:

• Inherit Zoom
• Fit Page
• Actual Size
• Fit Width
• Fit Visible

Simply select the folder, set the options you want, and click Run!

The tool can also convert JavaScript actions to a standard "Go to a page in this document"-action.

Note: This application requires Java installed. However, you don't need to have Acrobat on your computer for it to work.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Reader -- Display Form Data

Direct purchase using PayPal ($25 only)!
This script can be used to display all of the form data in the file in Adobe Reader.
The output is in plain text, which can be easily copied to another application.

Update: Free demo version now available. It will show the values of up to 3 fields.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Set Initial Layers To Current State

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only)!
This script allows you to set the current view state of the layers in the file as the default state when the file is opened.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Filter Comments By Color

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only)!
For some reason, Adobe has dropped the option to filter the comments list according to the color of the comment in version X of Acrobat. So I decided to jump to the rescue of those who depended on this feature, or just found it useful, and created a script which allows you to do it once again.
You can select the color you want to filter from a list of pre-defined colors, or just click on a comment with the color you want to use and then select the last option in the list: "Selected Comment Color". The script will then identify this color and will only present comments with the same color.

Here's how it works:
1. Select the comment color you want to see from the list

2. Now only the comments with this color are visible (even in the built-in Comments List!)

3. We remove one of the comments, and now we want to restore the comments we've hidden...

4. We're back to the original situation, with our edits in tact.

It's as simple as that...

If you have any questions regarding this tool, contact me directly.

New Scripts Location for Acrobat 10.1.1

To all of my customers (and everyone else who encounters this issue):
If you've installed scripts into the user-context folder of Acrobat X, which are:
On Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\10.0\JavaScripts

On Vista or Windows 7:

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\10.0\JavaScripts

And then updated to Acrobat 10.1.1, these scripts will no longer work, due to a change in Acrobat's folder structure.

To resolve this issue, move the scripts to the following folder:
On Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\Privileged\10.0\JavaScripts

On Vista or Windows 7:

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\Privileged\10.0\JavaScripts

If this folder doesn't exist, you can either create it yourself, or place the script in this folder instead:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat\JavaScripts

or

C:\Program Files(x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat\JavaScripts

(My thanks to the Acrobat Ninja for the info related to this problem)

Acrobat -- Create Popup Images

Direct purchase using PayPal ($85 only per license)!

This script will make your standard PDF file much more dynamic and interactive.
It allows you to insert "popup" images that appear whenever the user clicks a certain phrase, or even just hovers with the mouse above it! The image disappears when the mouse is clicked again, or moved away, respectively.

For example, let's say you have some figures in your file. Instead of linking to them on a different page, why not have the appropriate figure pop up whenever the user moves the mouse above the words "figure 1", "figure 2", etc.
The same can be done with products, people's names, tables, screenshots of websites, or whatever... Even pages from another PDF!

How it works:
1. You create a plain-text file (semi-colon delimited) that specifies the phrases and the image to associate with them. For example, it can be:

Figure 1;C:\My Images\Figure1.jpg
Figure 2;C:\My Images\Figure2.gif
Figure 3;C:\My Images\Figure3.png
Figure 4;C:\My Images\Figure4.jpg

2. You then select the properties of the links that display the images (border width, style and color, among other things), in this dialog:

3. The images and links are then automatically added to the file.
If you choose to do so, a check-box will be added to the top left corner of the first page which will prevent the images from popping up, unless checked.
Also, if you choose that option, a report will be presented at the end, specifying how many images were added, and to which pages.

You can download a sample file from here, which shows how the script works.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Batch Combine Even-Odd Pages

Direct purchase using PayPal ($70 per license)!

This script is similar to my original script for interleaving two PDF files (see: http://try67.blogspot.com/2008/12/acrobat-combine-even-odd-pages.html), but it works as a batch process and can combine entire folders at the same time.

Basically, you select the folder that contains the odd pages (1, 3, 5, etc.) and the one containing the even pages (2, 4, 6, etc.) and then the output folder, and the script will interleave all files with the same name in both folder and will save the combined file in the output folder.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Batch Watermark A PDF File

Direct purchase using PayPal ($75 per license)!

With this new and powerful tool one can create multiple copies of the same file, each one watermarked with the text of your choice from a list.

IMPORTANT: If you don't have Acrobat, or are interested in a more powerful version, suitable for processing large amounts of files), there's also a standalone version of this tool available here.

UPDATE: Now available, a free DEMO version of this tool. This version will process up to 3 items in your list, adding the watermark text to the top-left corner of the first page of the document, with a fixed font style and size.

For example, let's say you want to distribute a movie script to multiple people, and want to stamp each copy with the name of the recipient, to prevent the script from being leaked. You create a list of all the people in the production team, like so:

You then open your script and run the tool from the Tools menu.
You select your list and set the properties of the watermark text:

As you can see, you can set various options regarding the location and style of the text, as well as which pages to watermark and under which name to save the watermarked files.
The tool will proceed to create watermarked copies of the file, one for each item in the input file.

The result:

The folder with the watermarked files (notice the file names):

One of the watermarked files:

Later on, the files can be secured using a batch process to ensure that the watermarked texts can not be edited.

Note: This is not actually a batch process, so you don't have to have Acrobat Pro to use this tool. Any version of Acrobat will do.

You can download the sample PDF files and Names list shown above from here.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Batch Change Bookmarks Type (FREE)

This small tool will convert the bookmarks created by combining PDF files to "regular" bookmarks, like those created using Ctrl+B or using a script.

I'm offering this tool FOR FREE: Download now!

The app looks like this:

This is the bookmarks panel of a file before running the tool on it. The first three bookmarks were created when the file was combined, and the last one was created manually. Notice they have different icons.

This is the same file, after being processed with the tool.
All bookmarks are now of the same kind.

If you find this tool useful and would like to donate, it's always appreciated!

Acrobat -- Populate Form Data from URL

Batch version: Buy Now ($60 only)
Non-batch version: Buy Now ($40 only)
Direct purchase using PayPal!


PDF files have various Open Parameter options: you can link to a PDF at a specific page, named destination, zoom level, etc. You can even use a FDF file to populate form data, but this requires having such a file available on your server. It's easier to just do it directly from the URL, which is where this script comes into play.

With this new script created by me you can create a hyperlink to a PDF file, which will also populate it with some pre-defined values, using a simple URL parameter, like so:

http://www.myserver.com/files/products.pdf?rawdata=firstname:John;lastname:Smith

When the reader opens the file in their browser using this link, the form fields ("firstname" and "lastname", in this case) will automatically be populated with the data in the URL ("John" and "Smith", resp.).

IMPORTANT: The script will only work if the file is opened inside the browser window and using the Adobe PDF plugin.

Using the batch version of this script you can apply the code to multiple files in the same process (if you have Acrobat Pro, of course).

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Merge Files For Duplex Printing

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!

If you want to combine files for Duplex printing, but want to make sure that each new file starts on a new page, this is the tool for you.
It consists of a batch process that selects the files to be combined and a script that combines the files (in alphabetical order), adding blank pages where necessary to make sure that each file will begin on a new page when printing in Duplex mode.

For more information about this tool, or if you're interested in purchasing it, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Move Field Precisely (FREE)

This tool is available for free: Download now!

Placing form fields in Acrobat can sometimes be a challenge, especially if you want to achieve precise results, which is why I created this tool.
It allows you to select a form field (only one at the moment), and then move it a precise amount of points in whichever direction you want. You can also manually specify the exact coordinates of the field.

After selecting the field...

You can specify in which direction to move it...

and by how much...

Or, you can manually view and edit its coordinates:

For more information about this tool you can contact me directly, and if you find this tool useful and would like to donate, it's always appreciated!

Acrobat -- Copy & Paste Field to Multiple Pages

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!
NEW: A free demo version of the tool is now available. The demo version can only duplicate one field, to a maximum of 3 pages.

Acrobat has a built-in command to duplicate a single field to multiple pages, but the catch is that all of the duplicated fields are exact copies of one another, so with the same name and value. If you want unique fields, you must rename them manually afterwards (or use this tool: Acrobat -- Rename Duplicate Fields to Unique Fields)


An easier way to do it is by using this script, which lets you select a field, enter the page range to which to duplicate it, and then continues to make unique copies of the fields, so no renaming is necessary!

For example:

When you press OK, unique copies of the fields "Text1" and "Text2" will be made on pages 2 to 10.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat/Reader -- Print Sticky Notes

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!

One of the small annoyances of Reader is that you can't print the contents of Sticky Notes together with other markups and comments, it just prints the sticky note icon instead, which isn't very helpful...
So I created this script that allows you to print the contents of your stickies together with your file. The only draw-back is that the file must have the Extended Reader Rights to manipulate comments for it to work.

Here's a page with some sticky notes:

And here's how it looks like in the Print dialog after pressing the Print Sticky Notes icon in the Tools menu (notice the text is actually visible):

For more information about this tool, or if you're interested in purchasing it, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Link to a Specific Bookmark in a PDF

Batch version: Buy Now ($60 only)
Non-batch version: Buy Now ($40 only)
Direct purchase using PayPal!


PDF files have various Open Parameter options: you can link to a PDF at a specific page, named destination, zoom level, etc. But what you can't do is link to a specific bookmark. Well, until now...

With this new script created by me you can create a hyperlink to a specific bookmark in your PDF, using a simple URL parameter, like so:

http://www.myserver.com/files/products.pdf?bookmark=Index of all products

When the reader opens the file in their browser using this link, they will automatically jump to the specified bookmark, while still being able to browse the rest of the file, as usual.

Using the batch version of this script you can apply the code to multiple files in the same process (if you have Acrobat Pro, of course).

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Merge PDF Files in True Numeric Order

Direct purchase using PayPal ($60 only)!
When you combine PDF files in Acrobat to a single file, the file order is alphabetical by default. So if you want to merge these files:
1.pdf
2.pdf
(...)
9.pdf
10.pdf
11.pdf

Acrobat will sort them like this:
1.pdf
10.pdf
11.pdf
2.pdf
9.pdf
(...)

This is obviously wrong, and the only way to fix it is to re-order them manually, which is tedious at best and can be a real problem if you have hundreds of files.

That's why I created this tool to merge PDF files according to their true numeric order. My tool will add the files in this order:
1.pdf
2.pdf
(...)
9.pdf
10.pdf
11.pdf
And if there are any files with non-numeric names (like index.pdf), you can choose whether to append them at the beginning or the end of the file.

Here's how the application looks:

NOTE: This application does NOT require you to have Acrobat or even Reader, and it will run on both Windows and Macintosh computers.
You do need to have Java installed, though.

For more information about this tool you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Calculate Time Differences in a Worksheet

Direct purchase using PayPal ($60 only)!
In many timesheet-style PDF files you want to have a calculation of the time difference between a starting hour and an ending one. Something like when a worker checks in and then out. With this script you can automatically create the script to calculate that difference. There's also an option to sum up all times to a final piece.

Updates:
This script can now also be used to total an entire column of time expressions to a single result field.
You can now use the script for either 24-hour or 12-hour time notations.You can now also select whether to show the results in decimal notation (so 2 hours and 30 minutes will show as "2.5") or in time notation (so 2 hours and 30 minutes will show as "2:30").
(19/06/2014) : It's no longer necessary to have the fields named with a number starting from 1. You can specify any starting index number (the default is still 1, though).


For example, this is the form we have:

We then run the script and get this window, into which we enter the names of the fields:

The script then runs and applies the calculation scripts:

And the final result is this (the total field is at the bottom-left):

For more information about this tool you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Batch Redact Credit Card Numbers

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only)!
Works exactly like my Batch Redact Social Security Numbers script, only with Credit Card numbers.

The script will redact the following patterns:

• 999999999999
• 9999 9999 9999
• 9999-9999-9999 (or with any other punctuation marks)

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

Acrobat -- Batch Redact Social Security Numbers

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only per license)!

Note: I have also created a version of this tool for redacting Canadian Social Insurance Numbers (SIN), which can be purchased here, as well as a version that redacts British National Insurance Numbers (NI or NINO), which can be purchased here.
If your country uses a different format, contact me for a custom-made version. All the scripts cost the same, $30 only per license.

Social Security Numbers are sensitive information that should often be removed permanently from PDF files.
The only secure way of doing that is with the Redaction tool, which has an option for selecting SSN's. However, this option can't be used in a batch process, so if you want to apply this to multiple files you will need to do them one by one.

With this tool you can easily remove SSN's from multiple files with a single click, using a Batch Process (aka Action, in Acrobat X).
It offers a choice between just marking the suspected SSN's (to be reviewed manually and applied later) or marking AND deleting them at the same time.

As an extra bonus, it comes will a handy menu item to Search and Redact SSN's with a single click, not having to go through Acrobat's built-in menus, which can come in handy if you do it often.
You can use these menu items even in Acrobat Standard, where batch processing is not possible.

The script will redact the following patterns:

• 999999999
• 999 99 9999
• 999-99-9999 (or with any other punctuation marks)

A PDF with several SSN's in it (the text was taken from the Wikipedia page about Social Security Numbers).

The script can be run in a "Mark and Ask" mode, in which the user is prompted whether or not to apply the redactions.

The highlighted SSN's created by the script (in the manual mode):

The result of running the batch process in "Mark and Redact" option: The SSN's are permanently removed.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.