how to split a document using a keywords

Forum|Forum|7 days ago
August 26, 2026
4 replies
34 views

Good morning,
I would like to verify whether Adobe Acrobat (or any Adobe solution) is capable of automatically splitting a PDF file into multiple documents using a keyword as the splitting criterion

Our goal is to understand whether Adobe can support a workflow in which a single PDF containing multiple documents (e.g., employee payslips) is automatically separated and renamed based on a specific text field or identifier. the Hr team need to modify the pdf and separe into a multiple files using a keywords. If the utilities is available, how works?

Thank you in advance for your assistance. I look forward to your technical feedback.

radzmar

Community Expert

I don’t see a way to accomplish this with Acrobat. But there are 3rd party solutions available for business customers that can do this like ScannerVision. There you can automatically OCR PDFs in a specific folder and perform different actions based on keywords found in it.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

I was googling ScannerVison and see that there are a lot of companies that offer a similar service. Adobe Enterprise may have something like this with the Adobe Document Processing Services or Adobe Experience Manager.

Always be sitting down when a website says “call for quote”...

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

You could do it with a plugin that can create bookmarks based on a keyword(s):

https://evermap.com/Tutorial_ABM_BMWordsFromList.asp

Another option is to create the bookmarks with the program that creates the initial document. Usually with a TOC but other options are available by using paragraph or character styles.

Then use the split by bookmark feature in Acrobat.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @Emanuela L.

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out.

Please note that Acrobat's built-in Split does not support splitting by a keyword or text string. Its only split criteria are number of pages, maximum file size, or top-level bookmarks. So there is no native "split wherever this text appears" option.

Suggestions:

If each payslip is a fixed number of pages

If every payslip is, say, 1 page (or a consistent N pages), you do not need keywords at all. Use Tools > Organize Pages > Split, set Split by "Number of pages" to 1, and Acrobat produces one file per payslip. The only gap is naming, page-count split names files sequentially, so you would rename afterwards. For standard single-page payslips, this is usually the simplest, most reliable solution.

If the PDF has a top-level bookmark at the start of each payslip named with the employee name/ID, then Split by "Top-level bookmarks" and, in Output Options, tick "Use bookmark names for file names." That both splits and names each file per employee. The catch is that Acrobat will not auto-create a bookmark at each keyword occurrence, so this only avoids scripting if your payroll export can already produce a bookmark per employee.

Acrobat JavaScript (Acrobat Pro): a script uses getPageNthWord to find the identifier and extractPages to write each range to a new file named from that identifier. This does exactly your use case, but it is custom scripting, not a built-in button, and needs Acrobat Pro.

For more details, please refer to these help articles:

https://adobe.ly/4ccmgln

https://adobe.ly/4ccmhpr

https://adobe.ly/4wWkdcx

https://adobe.ly/4wWke05

I hope this helps, and please reach out if you need any assistance.

Regards,

Anand Sri.