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A
Anderzon
Participant
January 22, 2017
Question

Sorting PDFs by title, author

  • January 22, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 2083 views

I have a file full of textbook PDFs that I might want to sort by attributes like title, author, subject, etc.  Some of my books, when I open the PDF in Reader XI and go to properties, have titles and authors, but the boxes are greyed out so I can't edit or add attributes.

Is there a way to either let Windows access the attributes set in Acrobat, or to set custom attributes to a file in Windows Explorer?

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1 reply

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
January 22, 2017

- You can't edit the file's properties using the free Reader. You need Acrobat for that.

- You can't sort the files in Windows using the PDF metadata properties.

- It might be possible to add custom properties to your files in Windows Explorer and then sort them based on those properties, but that's not really a PDF-specific issue, more of a generic Windows issue.

A
AnderzonAuthor
Participant
January 22, 2017

It turns out you can sort by PDF metadata properties, and edit/add custom properties to PDFs in Windows Explorer.  I downloaded a tool called PDF-ShellTools and it worked great! (Link removed by Moderator)

"Get/set metadata info, split, merge, append, stamp and anonymize your pdf documents directly from the Windows shell."

I just downloaded ShellTools, added a custom field, mapped it to the property I wanted to edit (year), then checked a box to display it in the details pane on Windows Explorer.  Then in the details pane I could freely edit the year and all the other properties, and they showed up in the file's details.

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