Thursday, January 19, 2017

Acrobat -- Import/Export Tooltips




Direct purchase using PayPal ($25 only per license)!

This new handy tool is perfect for translators who work with PDF files.
If your file contains form fields then you probably want to translate the tooltip text that appears when the user hovers over your fields. So how to do it?

Well, the solution is this new script I've developed that allows you to export the full list of tooltips to a text file which can be edited in Excel and then imported back into the PDF, quickly and easily.

Here's how it works.
You have a PDF file with form fields and tooltips, like this one:

The original PDF, with one of the tooltip texts


You run the Export Tooltips command on it (can be seen in the Tools menu in the screenshot above), and it generates a text file that contains the field names as well as their current tooltips.
This text file can be opened in Excel, or any other plain-text editor (like Notepad or Notepad++):

The original output file

At this point we can edit the second column and inserted our translated texts (in Spanish, in this case):

The translated file
We close this file in Excel, go back to Acrobat and now run the Import Tooltips command:


We select the edited text file and the script imports the new tooltips:


And the results:

The new "Name" tooltip
 
The new "email" tooltip


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

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Acrobat/Reader - Synchronized Scrolling Two (Or More) PDF Documents




Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only per license)!

Update (11/01/2017): A FREE demo version of this tool is now available here.
It can be used to test it out, but it only contains the "Scroll Down" command.

Another New Feature: You can now easily align the viewing position of all the open files with the active one.

New Feature:  The tool can now scroll any number of open files, not just two, as requested.

Comparing PDF documents side by side is a common DTP task in Acrobat or Reader, but the problem is you can't scroll two documents at the same time, so keeping them aligned can be difficult and time consuming.
That is the reason I've developed this new script which allows you to keep your documents in perfect alignment while you review them.

You can select the scrolling offset (in points) and then scroll both documents up, down, to the left, to the right, or skip pages forwards or backwards, all in perfect sync.

The windows themselves can be arranged at whatever configuration you find most comfortable, and can even be placed on different monitors.

IMPORTANT: This script does not allow you to synchronize the scrolling of the files using the mouse or the keyboard arrows directly. It only works through the buttons that it adds to the interface of the application.

After installing the script, the new scrolling options are available under a new sub-menu under the Window menu, as well as under the Tools menu (or toolbar, for easy access):

(click to enlarge)




And after using the Scroll Down option, the documents have simultaneously scrolled and now look like this:
(click to enlarge)


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