How do I create an action to batch-replace complex multi-line text strings

[kristindav]

Hi All,

I'm brand new to this community and am new to using the Action Wizard as well. My boss asked me to build an action for my coworkers to batch edit our invoices. Ideally they should be able to just hit "start" and let the wizard do all the work for them. (This will be a temporary fix for the next 4-6 months until we get our new invoicing software).

We need the Wizard to:

1. Search all PDFs in a folder and find those that contain an incorrect return address

          --We have multiple divisions and only one of them has the incorrect address

          --All of the incorrect invoices have a slightly different naming convention so, if needed, we can have the Wizard search by document title

2. Replace that return address with the correct return address

If the above is impossible, maybe we could manually isolate the incorrect invoices, and have the wizard paste a new text box over the old incorrect text?

Thanks all!

[try67]

There's no simple way of replacing text in a PDF. You can redact it and then place a new Text comment (or text field) on top of it with the new address, but if their lengths are not the same it might look odd.

[kristindav]

Thank you! I'll look into that option.

[kristindav · Accepted solution]

I was able to solve #2 by taking a screen shot of the replacement text and using the "Import a Layer" function to completely overwrite the original text. I also used the "Flatten Layers" function to prevent users from moving the top layer and seeing the original incorrect address.

But is there a way to achieve #1? Can I have the Wizard search the folder and only edit certain PDFs?

[kristindav]

Since I found a resolution to my main question (issue #2), I am going to mark this question as "answered." I started a new thread for part 1.