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.

6 comments:

CÁTEDRA TARAMASSO said...

hello
does this work with the Export Values?

Gilad D. (try67) said...

Hi Vicky,

Do you mean the export values of a drop-down field? If so, then no, but you can use this script I've created to do that: http://try67.blogspot.com/2009/11/acrobat-import-text-file-to-drop-down.html

I can even add a function to it to export the current values to a text field, so it would be easy to translate them, if you wish.

Gilad

CÁTEDRA TARAMASSO said...

hello Gilad

I have some questions

1) the text in the tooltips, can contain symbols, like ( ) = ? . , and others? does de script support all characters that can be written in the tooltip?

2) I need to translate the export values too (yes or no, female or male, single or marrid) what is written in the property window under export value

3) can I try the script?

thank you very much
Vicky

Gilad D. (try67) said...

Vicky, to answer your questions:

1) Yes, it can include all of those symbols.
2) That will require a different kind of script, but I can develop it for you, of course.
3) Yes, but contact me privately at try6767@gmail.com and we'll discuss it further, please.

CÁTEDRA TARAMASSO said...

Hi, just to confirm and make sure before I purchase, can you please let me know if special characters (such as ?!#@, etc) and double byte characters (for language like Chinese, Arabic, Thai, Japanese, etc) are properly handled?
Vicky

Gilad D. (try67) said...

@CÁTEDRA TARAMASSO

Yes, it does, if the text file is encoded correctly.