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Participant
December 8, 2025
Question

Variable Data from a series of PDFs

  • December 8, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 290 views

I have envelopes to print in the hundreds. Each one must be addressed individually, so clearly a job for variable data. My problem is that the customer does not have an Excel file to provide me, instead they have hundreds of individual PDFs, and within each PDF is the address that needs to go on the adjoining envelope. Normally I would just do an image merge to plunk that one part of each pdf down in the address field, however a further problem is that the addresses in the PDF are all out of order for US mailing. (Zipcode first, then name, then state, then apartment if there is one, then street address last), so I would need to descramble the lines into a mailable order. Some have a line for apartment or office, some don't, some have an 'in care of' line, some dont. Is there a way to automate all of this? Thanks!

3 replies

Inspiring
December 10, 2025

@AllApp100 , following @Eugene Tyson's suggestion, here's a process to try:

  • Pull all the supplied PDFs into a single PDF
  • Upload the PDF to the AI system of your choice (I used Google just because it's available at work) with the instruction "create a table from the attached PDF, with fields for postal code, name, state, and up to three lines of address (apartment number if present, street address, town/city), without listing page numbers"
  • Copy the results into Excel (keep a look out for leading zeros in the zip codes - even preformatting the cells doesn't seem to help when pasting the data).
  • Save as .CSV
  • Use InDesign to datamerge the postage labels, with the fields placed in your preferred order

 

Test files attached.

AllApp100Author
Participant
December 18, 2025

I will try that and see if it works, thankyou!

Community Expert
December 9, 2025

Might be a job for AI - see if it can pull the addresses out and sort them in the correct order. 

Might work.

But as @Gord@APL says - providing a sample could be beneficial to understand the complexity.

Inspiring
December 9, 2025

Oh, that's a good call... I'd love to see what AI can do toward turning a bunch of inconsistent text PDFs into a workable spreadsheet for datamerge. Might have to add that to my slate of 'experiments for when I've cleared my inbox'.

Inspiring
December 9, 2025

If possible, it may be worth providing an example of the PDFs you're being asked to work with.

 

Based on what you've said, unless the PDFs are already forms, I suspect there's no quick and easy solution. While you can export text from these PDFs to Excel, it will most likely put everything into a single field, in the same order as the PDF, so not a great deal of help to anyone.

 

If they are forms, then it'd be a fairly simple process, detailed here: https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/using/collecting-pdf-form-data.html#merge-data