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avalonpp
Participating Frequently
August 22, 2016
Answered

Wrong document title shows when I open a file

  • August 22, 2016
  • 25 replies
  • 305370 views

Hi All:

I am working on an iMac using El Capitan 10.11.6. Until last week, when I upgraded to DC, hoping it would solve my problem (did not) I was using the previous version of Acrobat Pro. Regardless of version of Acrobat, whenever I open a PDF that came originally form a Word file, the wrong file title appears in the title bar above the page. Instead of "BigFile-Client ABC-2016" the title will be what it was in Word the first time I made the file "BigFile-GENERIC-2009" Even if I resave the file, add or subtract security, close and reopen, the name in the title bar is still wrong, and always an old name from years ago. This is a problem since I am customizing the same document for different clients and changing the names so I can tell them apart. Oddly enough, if I save and close the file, it appears in the desktop with the correct name and this does not happen at all with files that were originally made in InDesign. This problem just started a couple of weeks ago. Any ideas? What could have changed to cause this to just start happening?

    Correct answer AbhigyanModi

    If you get the right title in the source document in Word (or even blank), that would automatically be carried over when you create PDF.

    25 replies

    Show previous replies
    richelleh6556797
    richelleh6556797
    Participant
    May 23, 2017

    Open file in Adobe, click on File/Properties and you can alter the document's title.

      B
      bluemoon0009
      Participant
      November 2, 2019

      Hi, I tried but that tab is fixed and doesnt allow to change. Any idea? Thanks

      Bernd Alheit
      Community Expert
      Bernd AlheitCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      November 2, 2019

      Does you use Adobe Acrobat? Is the file protected?

      T
      Test Screen Name
      Legend
      March 22, 2017

      Not correct? The point was about Word documents, not PPT documents, and said nothing about renaming. Anyway, it's down to the software that makes the PDF. If it puts the wrong title, then Acrobat will happily show it.

      davidk68352095
      davidk68352095
      Participant
      March 22, 2017

      This is not correct.  I renamed an MS ppt document and still had the same issue.

        user2008151314
        user2008151314
        Participant
        October 11, 2016

        File > Properties > Initial View > Windows Options

        Show: Choose File Name rather than Document Title.

        But it seems that when converting MS documents to pdf, the default setting is always Document Title.  So it's a pain to have to change this setting for each pdf document, but for each document, you only need to change once. 

        I believe it's more of MS's side to set the default show setting being FileName or DocumentTitle. 

        I did some test, if you use "Print" to PDF, the default show setting will be FileName.

        If you use "Save As" to convert to PDF, the default show setting will be "DocumentTile" which is carried over from the Title field in MS Word/Powerpoint.

          AbhigyanModi
          Community Manager
          AbhigyanModiCommunity ManagerCorrect answer
          Community Manager
          October 12, 2016

          If you get the right title in the source document in Word (or even blank), that would automatically be carried over when you create PDF.

            J
            JH12
            Participant
            January 16, 2020

            This just isn't the case in my situation. My pdf doc has exactly the same filename as the Excel doc it came from, and it comes up with something different. I don't know where the pdf title is coming from but it is a problem. 

            G
            George_Johnson
            Inspiring
            August 23, 2016

            For the problem file, what does it show when you select: File > Properties > Description > Title

              A
              avalonppAuthor
              Participating Frequently
              October 4, 2016

              Sorry it took so long to get back. Anyway, under File> Properties > Description > Title it shows the old messed up title, and I can change that and then go to Initial View > Show > Document title to get what I want, but these files (and there are thousands of them) get changed regularly in their original program, which is Word. That means every single time I update the document I have to go into Properties and mess around with all this stuff? This was not a problem in earlier versions of this software. Isn't there some Preference I can set to make Acrobat always read the Filename and not the Document Title?

                T
                Test Screen Name
                Legend
                October 5, 2016

                There's no preference. If a file has a title Acrobat has always assumed It is more meaningful than the filename. Nothing has changed there so perhaps what has changed is that the way you make PDF files is now setting this title, and it wasn't before. It's coming from Word, I guess.

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