Acrobat -- Export Bookmarks Structure (to PDF/TXT), including page numbers

  Direct purchase using PayPal ($60 per license)!
Update (13/02/2020): Now available is a free demo version for this tool, that will export up to three bookmarks and down to three levels deep.

This script will create an independent TXT or PDF file with the summary of the entire bookmarks structure, properly indented and formatted according to the original structure.
It is also possible to add the page number to which each bookmark points to, creating a sort of Table Of Contents.

For example:

The source file:

(click to enlarge)

The result PDF:

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The result TXT:

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

Acrobat -- Extract Lowest-Level Bookmarks

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 per license)!
Update (09/08/2019): Now available is a free demo version of this tool, which will extract the first 3 bookmarks from the file.

This script is similar to my Extract Chapters by Bookmarks script, only it extracts the pages that belong to the lowest-level bookmarks instead of the highest-level ones (the "chapters").
This is useful if you want to split your document into small, usable files based on your bookmarks structure.

So, for example, all of the highlighted bookmarks in this tree will be extracted as new files:

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

Acrobat -- Scale PDF Pages

Direct purchase using PayPal ($60 only per license)!
Update (06/03/2019): The tool now includes an option to select the page orientation (ie, Portrait or Landscape) in addition to size.

ALSO, there's now a free demo version of this tool available, which will only convert one page in the file, to either A3 or A4.

Update (23/09/2018): Now there's a version of this tool available that allows you to scale PDF pages in a non-proportional way. It can be purchased here.

Update (02/07/2015): Now there's a new feature to this tool that lets you scale to one of several standard page sizes: A4, A3, A2, Letter, Ledger or Tabloid.And if you need any other standard size let me know and I'll add it!
The scaling to these sizes preserves the original proportions of the pages, so it adds white space around them instead of distorting them.
The dialog for this new feature looks like this:

The tool's standard dialog

Using this new tool you can scale your PDF pages to a new size of your choice, while maintaining the original aspect ratio of the pages, as well as any objects located in them, such as form fields, links or annotations (including stamps).

The script allows you to select which pages to scale, and offers two scaling options:

• To a certain percentage of the original size
• To a fixed size, specified by you, using one of the following units:
• Points
• Inches
• Millimeters

When you run the script (from the Scale Pages button it adds to the Tools menu on the right) it looks like this:

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In this option we select to scale the current page to 50% of the original size. The result can be seen below (click all images to enlarge them). Notice the zoom is the same as before, and the actual page size can be seen on the bottom-left corner of the window.

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Alternatively, we can also scale the pages in the file to a fixed size, 100 mm in width in this instance:

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And the result (again in the same zoom factor):

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 Using this file we can also see that the meta-objects on the page have been scaled down. This is the same page magnified to 250% zoom, allowing us to see the scaled link (bottom left corner), form field (top left corner, called "Button1"), and Square annotation (bottom right corner):

(click to enlarge)

This handy tool can be yours for just $60 per license! You can purchase it directly via PayPal using the "Buy Now" button at the top of this post.


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

Batch Edit File Links in PDF Files

Direct purchase using PayPal ($75 only per license)!


SPECIAL OFFER (This tool + Batch Edit URL Links):
Direct purchase using PayPal ($100 only for both licenses)!
Update (26-02-2019): This tool now supports editing links to external PDF files, while maintaining the target page or Named Destination used.

Update (25-06-2014): Yet another new feature! The tool now allows you to select which elements to process: Link objects, form fields, or even (and this is the new feature) bookmarks.

Update (22-06-2014): Another new feature in both the full version and the free demo version: A new button that allows you to write out all the file links in your files to a text file, so you can see what kind of links are used in your file, whether they're relative or absolute, and know how best to edit them.

Update (20-06-2014): Now available is a free demo version of this tool, which will process up to 3 links/form fields in the first 3 files in the selected folder.

This new stand-alone tool is very similar to my other tool, Batch Edit URL Links, only this one allows you to edit the file paths of either links or buttons.

Using this tool you can edit all the "Open a file" actions in all of the links or buttons in an entire folder of PDF files so that they point to a new location. For example, imagine you moved your linked files from one server ("File_Server") to a new one ("New_Server"). You run the tool, enter the following settings, and all of the PDF files in the selected folder are edited in seconds:

The application window (click to enlarge)

Another possible way of using this tool is to convert relative file links (which are created by default in Acrobat), to absolute links. So if you have a link pointing to "../../MyFile.pdf" and you want it to point to a fixed path, like "C:\Reference Files\MyFile.pdf", you can use this tool to do that as well.
Of course, the other way around is possible too.

And now this tool is offered as a special of a special offer: You can buy it together with the other batch tool for just $100, instead of the usual price of $150 (for both). Use the Buy Now button at the top of the page to enjoy this great deal!

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

Acrobat -- Create Bookmarks from Titles

Direct purchase using PayPal ($75 only per license)!
Or you can buy this tool together with Create TOC from Bookmarks, for just $99 for the pair!
Another Update (12/09/2018): A free demo version of this tool is now available. It will create up to 3 titles in the first 10 pages of the file.

Another Update (30/10/2014): It's now also possible to specify the maximum font size to be used for detecting the titles in the file, as well as to remove the existing bookmarks when running the tool.

Update: The tool can now process up to 999 pages, instead of just 99... Also, a new feature has been added to it where you can select which pages to process (skipping ones that you don't want to bookmark, like the cover or index pages, for example), and also specifying the minimum font size to consider as a title. So if you know that the titles in your file are at least 10-points large, you can tell the script to ignore anything smaller than that.


This tool tries to bring order to messy PDF files by identifying the title (or heading) on each page and creating a bookmark to match it.

Many articles, manuals and books are created without a proper bookmarks structure, and sometimes even without a Table of Contents (TOC). This tool tries to fix that creating a bookmarks structure based on the most important title that appears on each page your file. If multiple pages contain the same title, only the first one will be considered, since it doesn't make sense to have identical bookmarks pointing to each page.

After the script identifies the candidate titles, it will display a set of dialogs with the text found for each page of the document. You can tick each page on or off, and even edit the text. At the end, the bookmarks you selected will be created, and will automatically point to their matching pages.

Let's look at an example: We have a file without any bookmarks in it. We run the script from the menu item it added under "Tools":

(click to enlarge)

Acrobat -- Convert Comments To Redactions

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only per license)!
Update (26/04/2018): The demo version will now also convert Square comments, so you can redact non-textual objects as well.

Update (06/02/2014): A free DEMO version of this script is now available here. This version will convert the last 3 highlight comments in the file to Redactions, and then apply them.

One of the best features of Acrobat Pro is the Redaction tool. It provides the only safe way of removing information from a PDF file. However, this feature is unfortunately missing from Acrobat Standard.
But did you know that it's technically possible to create AND apply redactions in Acrobat Standard? There's just no direct access to this hidden feature through the application's menus. Until now, that is!

Using this new tool I've developed you can bring this feature into your Acrobat Standard and convert your regular comments into Redaction markups, and then apply them, all with a single click!
You can select between converting all the comments in the file, just the highlights, or just the currently selected ones.

So instead of spending a lot of money on an upgrade, make the most of the application you have and add this handy tool to it!

Let's have a look at an example (the screenshots below were taken in Acrobat Pro, but the same applies for Acrobat Standard). I've marked up the parts of this page I want to remove. Notice I created comments of various kinds: a square comment (in red at the top), some highlights (in yellow), and a strike-through (in red at the bottom).

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I selected to convert all the comments, and the results are:

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Now I've clicked on Yes, and the redaction markups are applied. The selected data and graphics are gone!

(click to enlarge)

IMPORTANT: Applying the redaction markups is NOT REVERSIBLE! The only way to get back the redacted information after doing so is to close the file without saving it.

ALSO IMPORTANT: This script is only compatible with Acrobat 9 or higher.


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

Acrobat -- Highlight All Instances of a Word or Phrase in a PDF

Direct purchase using PayPal ($60 only)!
Update (23/04/2018): New available, a free demo version of this tool, that will highlight up to 3 matches of the search term in the document.

Ever needed to make the same comment again and again and again? Now you can do it with one click! This script will highlight (and add a comment to) all instances of a specific word, partial word or phrase. The color of the comment, author's name and type of search (case sensitivity, whole word match) can also be set. Very useful for editing and review scenarios.

New feature: Use the Transparent color to make a pop-up effect over your text.

Here's how it looks like:

And the result of running the script...

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

Acrobat -- Insert One PDF File Into Another Multiple Times

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!
Update (14/03/2018): A free demo version of this tool is now available. It will insert the selected file up to 3 times into the source file.

There are many times when you want to insert one PDF file into another one multiple files. For example, you might want to insert a blank page after each page, for printing purposes, or a cover page after every 10 pages, or some similar scenario.
With this script you can achieve that with ease.

When running the script you'll be prompted to select the file to insert into the currently active file, and then to enter the various insertion options:
- After or before how many pages the file should be inserted
- At which page to start (by default: the first page of the file)
- At which page to stop (by default: the last page of the file)
- Number of pages to insert from the target file

Simply click on OK, and the selected file will be inserted in seconds!

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

Acrobat -- Combine Even-Odd Pages

Direct purchase using PayPal ($50 per license)!
Update (13/03/2018): Now available is a free demo version of this tool, that will merge up to 5 pages.

This script will take two existing PDF files and interleave (collate) their pages into a new file, so that the pages from the first document will become the odd pages (1,3,5,7...) and the pages from the second document will become the even pages (2,4,6,8...) of the new file.

New Feature:  It is now also possible to merge a file containing odd pages in ascending order (1,3,5,7...) with a file containing even pages in descending order (8,6,4,2...). This is particularly useful if you scan a stack of pages, turn then over and then scan the reverse side in the opposite order.

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

Acrobat -- Mail Merge and Email PDF Files

Direct purchase using PayPal ($99 per license)! Another new and powerful tool to make your PDF experience easier and more efficient.
This time, it's a PDF mail-merging tool. "Mail merging" is the production of multiple (and potentially large numbers of) documents from a single template form and a structured data source (Wikipedia). In this case the template is a PDF file with form fields and a plain-text or CSV file (which can be easily exported from an Excel spreadsheet).
The tool even offers the option to automatically email the merged files to the recipients (see below)!

A free DEMO version of this tool which will merge up to 3 fields in up to 3 items from a list, but does not contain the auto-email feature. It does include the option to import image files into button fields, though.


Update (27/01/2018): Due to a bug in some versions of Acrobat that prevented merging more than 50 files at a time I have removed the Flattening Pages option from the tool and reverted it back to a previous version that was not affected by this issue.
Instead of the "Flatten Merged Files" option I added an Action that allows doing it after the files have been merged, so the functionality of the tool is the same.

Update (01/11/2017): Another new feature, based on popular demand.
It's now possible to encrypt the merged files, either using the same policy for all of them, or by specifying a policy for each individual file (this has to be done manually, though).
In addition, I've moved the option to flatten the merged files from the email dialog to the main one, which means that you can do it even if you don't wish to email them.
The new application dialog looks like this now:

The new features are highlighted in red

When the option to encrypt the files is selected, this dialog appears:

Here you can select your own security policy (like the last one in the screenshot) to apply the same policy to all files, or one of the built-in policies (the first two) and specify the specific settings you wish to use for each file.

Update (29/08/2017): Yet another new feature added to this tool. It's now possible to flatten the copies of the merged files before they are sent out, so the users will receive a non-editable copy.
The new Email Settings dialog now looks like this:

Update (28/01/2015): A new feature and a new look for this tool! The Price is the same...

The new feature is the ability to merge all the records as a single PDF file. This means you can then easily print them out and send out by regular mail, for example.

The new look of the tool is more concise and easy to use. There are still two buttons, but they are now called: "Mail Merge" and "Mail Merge (To Single File)".

The new buttons (click to enlarge)

After clicking on the first one, for example, you're presented with this dialog window, where various settings can be set:

Clicking the second button causes this smaller window to appear:

Then you're prompted to select the input file and if you selected the option to email the generated files then the email settings window (see below) appears as well.

The files are then generated and saved. In the "single file" a file called merged.pdf is generated and saved in the same folder as the original PDF file.


Update (04/12/2014): A new feature added to this tool. You can now include not just text but also IMAGES in your merged files. Simply create a button field in your PDF and set its layout to "Icon Only" and then specify the file-path to the image in the input spreadsheet, and voila! The image is automatically imported into your file along with the other data.


How the tool works?
You start by setting up your input file and the empty PDF form (notice the column headers match the field names in the PDF):

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.
(Click on "Read More" to see the rest of the post)

Acrobat/Reader -- Advanced Add Header/Footer Text

Direct purchase using PayPal ($75 only per license)!   Update (13/12/2017): Another new feature in this tool! It's now possible to use it as a part of an Action in Acrobat Pro to process multiple files using the same settings.

Update (31/01/2017): Yet another new feature added! It's now also possible to use the page number in the group of pages being processed. For example, if you select to add your header to just the odd pages then instead of using 1, 3, 5, etc. you can refer to them as 1, 2, 3.

Update (03/12/2016): Two new features added to this too: You can now specify just the total number of pages in the file as a parameter, and also specify the distance of the text from the edge of the page.

(The new script dialog)

Update (26/04/2016): It's now possible to add not just the page number, but also the page label.

Update (04/02/2015): Now available is a free demo version of this tool, which will allow you to test it before buying it. This demo version will only add the header/footer to the first page of the document.

Update (04/06/2014): New feature added to this script that allows you to insert various Metadata properties of the file into the header/footer text. They are:

• Title
• Author
• Subject
• Keywords
• Creator
• Producer

Update (27/02/2014): I've added a new feature that allows you to insert the file's creation date, in the format of your choosing, into the header/footer text as well.

This new tool is an improved version of the built-in Add Header & Footer command that you can find in Acrobat. The reason it's improved is because it can be used in the free Adobe Reader, and also it contains some additional features, not available in the original version.

Some of these features are:
- The ability to insert the file's name, with or without the .pdf extension text to the text
- The ability to insert the full file path to the text
- The ability to lock the added texts after adding them, so they can't be edited (by someone using Reader)
- The ability to set the added texts as printable or as non-printable.

In addition, you have all the usual features like selecting the text's location on the page (right/left/center and header/footer), setting its appearance (font, size, color, background color), selecting to which pages to add the texts, inserting the current date to the text in various formats, inserting the current pages number (on its own, or in addition to the total number of pages), etc.

So for example: We have a file that we want to add a header to. We just open it in Reader XI and click the button added by the script under the Extended panel on the right:

(click to enlarge)

The dialog window that pops open allows you to specify the settings for the Header or Footer that you want to add to the file. Notice that in the one below I've added the file's name, the current date in a specific format, and also a page number:

(click to enlarge)

 
The results of adding the Header can be seen on the top of the first and second pages in this screenshot:

(click to enlarge)

(New feature: inserting the page label into the header or footer)

The page label is located in the top-left corner of the pages

IMPORTANT NOTE: To use this script in Reader requires that you either use Reader XI, or if an earlier version of Reader is used the file must have the right to add comments applied to it.

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

Acrobat -- Apply Image Fields Toolkit

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only per license)!
Update (08/11/2017): Now available, a free sample file that demonstrates the image field toolkit.
The script in this file is limited to rotating the field to only 0 or 180 degrees, and the "Image Scaling: When" section is disabled, but the rest works just like in the full version.

With the introduction of the new Image field into Acrobat Reader DC (Continuous), I thought it was time to introduce some of the more advanced features of these fields and make them more accessible to the users.
Using this script you can apply my Image Field Toolkit to your fields. What this means is that they will be able to easily and quickly apply multiple commands to the fields, such as:

• Select an image
• Clear the image
• Set the image's rotation (in intervals of 90 degrees)
• Set the image's scaling options (how and when to scale)

And if the field is set to include not just an image, but also a caption text they'll be able to also:

• Set the caption text
• Clear the caption text

All you have to do is run the script on your file in Acrobat, and it will automatically apply the code to all Image fields (button field with the Icon option enabled).
Clicking the field will then cause a pop-up menu to appear with all of these options, which can be used in both Acrobat and in the latest version of the free Reader DC (Continuous)!

 Here's how it works. You open your file with the image fields in Acrobat and run the script from the menu item it adds to the Tools panel:

The original file with the image fields

It will identify those fields and prompt you to make sure you want to apply the Toolkit to them (this will overwrite any existing Mouse Up events associated with them!):

The script's confirmation dialog

After running the script on the file in Acrobat we can save it and then open it in Reader, where it looks pretty much the same:

The same file in Acrobat Reader DC

However, when we press one of the fields, the Image Field Toolkit menu appears:

The Toolkit for an image field

We can then select an image for this field:

And then change the way it looks. For example, we can rotate it:

The image rotation options

The rotated image

Or we can change the scaling options for it, so it fits better into the field:

The image scaling options

The scaled image

If we now click on the field that contains both an image and a caption we can do the same there, starting with selecting an image:

The menu for an image field with a caption

And then we can set a new caption text:

The image and the new caption in the same field

We can even clear the selected image, directly through the toolkit's menu:

So all in all, this toolkit adds a lot of options to the standard image fields that come with Acrobat and Reader, and allows you (and your users) to make the most of them!

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