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S
Smallbadger
Known Participant
April 2, 2020
Answered

Metadata in PDFs

  • April 2, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 4913 views

Hi all,

 

I really want my team's exports from Illustrator, InDesign etc. to include metadata by default.

Ideally, I want the filename and the designer's name (or login details... some kind of identifier).

I don't want this to be a manual process - they'll forget. I don't want 3rd party apps ideally.

 

Am I asking the impossible? Any help would be awesome.

 

Richard.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Kasyan Servetsky

In InDesign, you can do this automatically with a start-up script, say, before the document is saved.
Here's a script I wrote recently on request here on the forum.

— Kas

3 replies

M
Mike-drawinginc
Participant
September 2, 2022

Richard, I know your post is old but I've just discovered a solution that's working in both InDesign and Illustrator. When exporting your PDF file from either application choose one of the PDF-X standards, the following worked for me:

 

PDF/X–1a:2001

PDF/X–3:2002

PDF/X–4:2010

 

In InDesign it's saving the filename and extension into the meta data of the PDF. In Illustrator it saves the filename without the ai extension.

 

Tests carried out using InDesign version 17.3 and Illustrator version 26.3.1

Kasyan Servetsky
Kasyan ServetskyCorrect answer
Legend
April 3, 2020

In InDesign, you can do this automatically with a start-up script, say, before the document is saved.
Here's a script I wrote recently on request here on the forum.

— Kas

    S
    SmallbadgerAuthor
    Known Participant
    April 6, 2020

    Perfect! That traps a key piece of info without user intervention (thus avoiding user error ^_^ )

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    BobLevineCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 2, 2020
    It's not magic. If you don't supply the information it's not going to be exported.
    S
    SmallbadgerAuthor
    Known Participant
    April 2, 2020

    It's not?! Damn. lol

    As Adobe know the username of the person logged in, as the PC/Mac does too, I thought maybe adding this data to the metadata in a kind of 'include the name of the person who this app knows is using it' thing would exist. I also thought as I've typed the name of the PDF in the export field, upon export copying of this to the metadata in a kind of 'add own selfs name in here' would be possible... maybe.

     

    I suspect from your reply that this is in fact not possible and so can only thank you for your time.

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    BobLevineCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 2, 2020
    You might be able to script it, but be prepared to pay someone to do it.
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