Possible to generate document property / metadata report for library of pdf documents?

[mike211175]

I commonly have libraries of pdf documents (hundreds, or even thousands, from different sources) and would like to generate a report stating which of those pdf documents (1) are password protected (2) have electronic signatures (3) have security settings, (4) etc. 

Is it possible to run a report (ideally to a .txt or .csv file) that will list the pdf file names and indicate document properties / metadata such as the above for each of the pdf files in the library?

I have looked extensively for this but cannot find any such functionality in Adobe Acrobat Pro 2017, or in any third party software tools. 

Any assistance on this will be very much appriecated - Thanks in advance for any guidance! 

Regards

Michael

[Thom Parker]

As long as the documents can be opened without a password or certificate, then a batch script in Acrobat could be used to detect many of the properties your interested in. But any document that can't be opened without authentication would stop the process. So a script really isn't a suitable solution, and besides, scripts are very slow.

An Acrobat plug-in could be written to attempt opening PDFs and at least log that the doc requires authentication if it can't open it to find other properties. A stand alone tool could also be written to do the same thing using a good PDF library. 

All of these are custom solutions that require software development. I don't know of any off the shelf tool that does this. 

[mike211175]

Thanks Thom_Parker for your reply - it is good indication that I am not overlooking something obvious! The Bates stamping tool in Adobe Pro runs a screening check when you tell it that you want to Bates stamp a library of documents in a folder i.e. it will tell you which ones have signatures, and which ones have various other issues before you proceed with the Bates stamping. But the output from that process is not easily copy and pastable into a usable format. Also, it requires you to click "cancel" to each password protected document, but I agree with you it would be good if the checker could just report back which ones seem to be password locked.  If anyone happens to be aware of a little-known third party tool that might acheive this please do let us know the name of it / where to find it. Certainly willing to pay a reasonable price for such software. Thanks again. 

Michael

[margueritek]

The XFA metadata in a PDF may be encrypted, or not, depending on settings when security is set. If the XFA metadata is not encrypted, you can just process the file with an XFA parser. It is not required to open the PDF to do this. Look for <x:xmpmeta>...</x:xmpmeta> as plain text in the PDF

[try67]

As mentioned, doing it in Acrobat is problematic, as it would get "stuck" if the file has a file-open password applied to it.

Also, Acrobat is not really suitable to processing such large amounts of files.

I would recommend using a stand-alone tool for this. There are several PDF libraries out there that can handle this task and such tools can be much more robust than Acrobat and handle many more files, without having to display them on screen.

If you're interested in hiring someone to create such a tool for you feel free to contact me privately via [try6767 at gmail.com] and we could discuss it further.