Create Encrypted Copies of a PDF File

Direct purchase using PayPal ($97 only per license)!

Have you ever encountered a situation where you have a PDF file that you wish to distribute to a group of people, and want to have a uniquely secured version of that file for each one of them? Think for example on a movie script that you wish to send to various people, or on a e-book that you want to sell to your clients, but one each of them to have a different password. How would you go about doing it?
Up to now the only option was either a very expensive product, or to do it manually in Acrobat... But not anymore.

Using this new stand-alone tool which I've created you can make as many secured copies of your file as you wish, using a variety of security options.
You can add a password that the user will need in order to open the file, or to use a password to determine what the user can and can't do with your file (such as print it, extract content from it, fill in the form fields in it, etc.), or both.

A FREE demo version of this tool is available to download from here. It contains all the functions available in the full version, but will process up to 5 files only. Of course, the full version can process as many files as you wish...

Here's how the main window of the tool looks like (click all images to enlarge):

The passwords can be either randomly generated by the tool, or you can use a list of passwords if you prefer. For the password that controls the editing of the file you can even decide to use the same password for all copies (it can be identical to the file open password, or one that you determine).

This tool works on both Apple and PC computers, and will generate a list of all the passwords used for the various copies of your file, so you can have an overview of them when distributing them to the recipients.

Acrobat -- Create Custom Links from Text

Direct purchase using PayPal ($60 only per license)!
Direct purchase of the Standalone version using PayPal ($120 only per license)!

Update II: There's now a free demo version of the stand-alone tool available. This version is identical to the full tool, but it will only create the first 3 links from the first 3 items in your list.

Update: Now available is a Standalone version of this tool, which runs independently of Acrobat and is therefore much more suited for processing large amounts of files, files with a lot of text in them or long lists of items to link. If you need to use this tool extensively, this is the version for you.
 

Let's say you have a PDF and you want to link all the instances of your name to your website, or all the times the words "Index" appear to the first page of the file, or even to a index.pdf file located elsewhere on your computer... Doing so would require going over them one by one, creating a link over each one, setting its properties, its action, etc. In short, a pain in the neck...

This is why I created this new tool, which you can use to automatically add links of various types of your PDF files.
The tool will read in an input file, for example a CSV file exported from Excel, with the search terms and the properties for each of those links, and will continue to create those links.

The possible actions the links can perform are:

•  Open a web page
•  Go to a specific page
•  Open a file
•  Open a relative file
•  Open an attached file
•  Go to a named destination

In addition, you can set the following properties for each link:

•  Visibility: A visible or invisible rectangle
•  Highlight Style: None, Invert, Outline or Inset/Push
•  Line Thickness: Thin, Medium, Thick
•  Color: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue or Yellow.

When you purchase this tool it comes with the complete specification of how to set up the input file, as well as a sample one.

This tool even comes with a batch process (aka Action), which allows you to add the links you wish to add to multiple files, with just a single click (provided you have the Pro version of Acrobat).

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

Acrobat -- Re-sort Duplex Pages

Direct purchase using PayPal ($25 only)!
Using this script you can re-sort a file that contains Duplex pages to the correct order.

Duplex pages order means pages which are in this order:
1,3,5,7,9,11,12,10,8,6,4,2
After running the script, the order would be the standard:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12

This tool contains both a version to process a single file and a batch process (Action) that can be used in Acrobat Pro to process multiple files at the same time.
All for the low price of just $25!


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

Acrobat X -- Return Stamp Name to Stamps Menu

There is an unfortunate change made to the way the stamps menu works in Acrobat X.
While in previous versions the name of the stamp appeared in the Stamps menu underneath the stamp image, in Acrobat X it is gone. If you have multiple stamps with similar looks it is now very difficult to distinguish between them because of this new behavior (bug?).

(Click title for more...)

Acrobat -- Create "HotSpot" Highlights

Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!
If you want to draw attention to certain areas in your PDF file when the user hovers with the mouse above them, this is the ideal tool to achieve that.
What this tool will do is add special cross highlights to the file that will show up in bright yellow when the user hovers with the mouse above the areas you define.

All you have to do is create form fields with the names "HotSpot1", "HotSpot2", "HotSpot3", etc., in your file, like so:

Acrobat -- Combine PDF Files in Numeric Order

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only)!
This tool is similar to my stand-alone tool, Merge PDF Files in True Numeric Order in that it combines a folder of PDF files in true numeric order, as opposed to the default behavior of Acrobat to use alphabetic order.
The difference is that this tool only works within Acrobat, and that it is somewhat more flexible than the other tool.
You select the first file in the sequence of files to combine (for example Page1.pdf) and the tool will create a new combined file of that file and all subsequent files in that folder, in their true numeric order: 1.pdf, 2.pdf, 3.pdf, ..., 9.pdf, 10.pdf, 11.pdf, etc.

The result will be saved in the save folder as "combined.pdf".

Acrobat -- List All Email Addresses

Direct purchase using PayPal ($20 only)!

If you want to create a summary of all the email addresses that appear in your file(s), you can use this script, for the low price of just $20!

The script can be used on a single file, or on multiple files in an Action (batch process), if you have Acrobat Pro.

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

Acrobat -- Search & Replace Text in Form Fields

Direct purchase using PayPal ($25 only)!
Similar to my Search & Replace Text in Bookmarks script, you can use this new script to search and replace the text in all the text fields in a single file, and if you have Acrobat Pro you can run this as an Action (AKA 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.

IMPORTANT: This tool does not edit the actual static text of a PDF file, only text that is a part of a form field!

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

And all of the matching text in your text fields is 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.

Software Recommendation: SnapIt

Just wanted to recommend a handy tool I've been using to create my posts for this website: SnapIt Screen Capture is a handy tool for grabbing and saving screenshots.

You can capture anything you see on your PC screen with SnapIt. It is convenient tool for graphic designers, bloggers who capture and crop images for their posts, for tech writers who need to describe menus and interfaces of applications, web designers and those who work with graphics every day. It captures and auto saves images with one click.

* Supports hotkeys, auto-saving, clipboard
* Automatically copies screenshots to the clipboard
* Tracks capture history, auto-saves captured images
* Saves files in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats
* Auto-names captured images

For more information you can visit:
http://www.digeus.com/products/snapit/snapit_screen_capture_3_5.html

Acrobat -- Create Custom Email Links

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only)!

Acrobat has a built-in way to create links from email addresses, but the links are all the same and can't be customized in any way.
Using this script you can create email links that change their color when you hover above them with the mouse (from black to blue), and can even be customized to create an email with a certain subject line, CC or BCC addresses, and even the email message body itself.

The PDF file with the text before running the script:

The same file, with the newly created link:

The link as it looks like when hovering over it with the mouse:

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

Acrobat -- Extract Groups of Pages

Direct purchase using PayPal ($30 only)!

Using this tool you can extract repeating groups of pages from your PDF files.
All you have to do is enter the number of pages per new file, and optionally range of pages to process in the original document (the default values are the first and last pages), and the script will take care of the rest.
The new files will be saved in the same folder as the original one.

For example, if you have a 10-page document and you select the following settings:

When the script is done, you'll see that 4 new files were created:

And you can find them in the same location as the original:

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

Acrobat -- Apply Automatic Date Calculation

Direct purchase using PayPal ($50)!
Update: I've created a file that demonstrates how the script works. It can be downloaded from here.

One of the most common tasks when working with date fields is to automatically apply a certain data calculation to a field. For example, you want to have a field with today's date, and then one that automatically shows 4 days after from that date, or 2 weeks or a month, or something similar. This is usually quite complex and time consuming to implement, but no longer...

Using this new tool I've created you can easily select your initial field, the amount of time to add (or subtract!) from it, the target field, the date format to use, and you can even specify to the script to ignore weekends (Saturday and Sunday) or to specify a list of holidays to ignore (this can be useful when calculating working days, for example).

Here's how the tool looks like in Acrobat:

In this case, the result is that the field called "Text3" will automatically have the date of "Text2", plus 5 weeks, unless that date falls on a weekend or one of of the holidays specified in the list. In that case it will be the first following day after that.

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

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.