Finding which PDFs are not text searchable

If you have a very large set of PDFs, and you're uncertain about which files have searchable text, you can set up an Adobe action utilizing the Preflight tool to find which files contain no, or very few text objects.

In the Actions Wizard, add the Preflight option from the Document Processing menu:

Click on 'Specify Settings' for the Preflight action, and in the dialog box select the option for 'Acrobat Pro DC 2015 Profiles'

Then in the long menu to the right select the option to 'List page objects, grouped by type of object'

Choose the option to create a report for either successes or errors and set a folder for these reports, and check off the box to display a summary PDF.

Also choose the option in the Save & Export menu to save each file processed by Preflight. Click on the icon to the right to get the option to set a specific local folder to save the reports to.

When it's run the action will give you the option to add multiple files:

The action will generate a PDF portfolio with multiple PDFs for each original PDF. Select all of the PDFs in the portfolio, and then right click and select the option to extract each PDF from the portfolio.

Then combine the reports into a single PDF file, and then save the text of the report to a text file . . .

Open the text file in a text editor, and run a find and replace to make sure that the captions, 'File name:'; 'Path:'; 'Text Objects'; 'Vector Objects' each appear at the beginning of a new line.

Then paste the text into column A of an Excel spreadsheet. In column B enter this formula:

=IF(LEFT(A2,4)="Path","",IF(LEFT(A2,12)="Text Objects",A2,B1))

. . . start in cell B2, and then pull down using CTRL + D. In cell C2 do the same with this formula:

=IF(LEFT(A2,9)="File name",A2,"")

Note that in the reports the text object count for a file is listed before the file name.

When you filter for any entries in column C, you'll see how many text objects are in each file:

Keep in mind that a file which has a lot of text which still needs to be OCR'd, may have a few text objects used in an exhibit slip sheet, headers, footers, and so forth. Review any file that has a small number of text objects based on the overall page count.

Javascript to change annotation types in Acrobat

Using javascript posted here by Evermap, and copied below you can automatically transform annotations from one type in Adobe Acrobat to another type. It will not only allow you to convert highlights, underlined text, and crossed out text, but also to change from proposed redactions to any one of these annotations - but not vice versa.

In order to add the script to a new action in Acrobat, select the Action Wizard tool and then click on 'New Action', and choose 'Execute JavaScript' from the 'More Tools' drop down menu.

Click on 'Specify Settings' and enter the script in the editor. Set the type you want to find on the first highlighted line in the below screen grab, and the type you want to add in on the second line. If you want to reference crossed out text use the type, 'CrossOut'.

Uncheck the 'Prompt User' box, and then add the Save step to the action, so you will not be prompted to save each file when the action runs.

After saving and running the action, you can process multiple files by selecting the options in the drop down menu to add files or an entire folder.

The script can be used to convert multiple proposed redactions in multiple PDF files like this:

The script will convert one or more lines of continuous text selected for a redaction, but it will not convert a large block of text set for redaction.

The action will give this result:

You can add a second javascript to the same action to specify the highlighting color you want the action to convert annotations or proposed redactions to:

this.syncAnnotScan();

var annots = this.getAnnots();

for (var i = 0; i < annots.length; i++) {

if (annots[i].type == "Highlight") {

annots[i].strokeColor = color.yellow;

}

}

try

{

this.syncAnnotScan();

for (var nPage = 0; nPage < this.numPages; nPage++)

{

// get all annotations on the page

var Annots = this.getAnnots({

nPage:nPage

});

// process each annotation

if (Annots != null)

{

for (var i = 0; i < Annots.length; i++)

{

if (Annots[i].type == "StrikeOut")

{

Annots[i].type = "Highlight";

}

}

}

}

}

catch(e)

{

app.alert(e);

}

Clean metadata from multiple PDF files

Note that you can remove configurable metadata (metadata that can be added or modified by an application user) using Adobe Acrobat.

When viewing an individual PDF, go to File . . . .Save As Other . . .Optimized PDF

Then in the PDF Optimizer dialog box, check off just the box for 'Discard User Data', and select the individual options for different categories of metadata to the right.

Even better, set up an Adobe Acrobat action to scrub the metadata from multiple PDF files. Under Tools . . . Action Wizard . . . Create New Action, select the option in the Protection section for 'Remove Hidden Information'. Bring it over to the right, and then after being sure to uncheck 'Prompt User' so the action doesn't make you save each PDF, click on Specify Settings. You will probably want to uncheck the options for 'Bookmarks' and 'Links' since the final version of a PDF of a court filing may need to retain these features.

The action will give you the option to add one file or an entire folder of files. Start the action to process the files.