How to keep the last page open information separate for multiple copies of the same file.

Question

I have two copies of the same file (not shortcuts). I want them to remember the last open page separately. Instead when I reopen them, they both have the same page open, which probably is the last open page of the file closed last. I even downloaded the file fresh, it still shares the last page open information and applies it to both. How to get around this?

I could try splitting up the pdf into separate files by the sections that I'm studying.

Message was edited by: Dick Army

Test Screen Name · Accepted Answer

That suggests it uses the original file ID (which doesn't change) rather than the revised file ID (which changes on each save). PDF files keep both, and they have different uses. That's about as far as you can get with Acrobat Reader - which seems clearly designed to remember the position of the file no matter where it's come from, and is deliberately doing exactly what you don't want. If you had commercial Acrobat you could try copying the pages to a new file.

bitanime · Answer

Don't know if I'm too late to answer this, but Adobe Reader bases the file ID on an ASCII element of the PDF file itself.

I was working on a program to specifically ease this process, but it's a pretty straight forward one.

If you simply open the pdf file with a text editor, such as Notepad++ for starters, you can scroll to the bottom of the file to find an attribute named ID and defined with a Hex value.

It will look something like this. You can find it using a search function and look for "/ID[<" which will point you to the right location.

/ID[<B4D47F4F193E2644809A0D9C091ADF35><B4D47F4F193E2644809A0D9C091ADF35>]

To change the file's association identifier, simply change a number or letter of it's value in both columns as such:

/ID[<C4D47F4F193E2644809A0D9C091ADF35><C4D47F4F193E2644809A0D9C091ADF35>]

and save the file. This will not corrupt the file in any way and adobe reader will read it as a different file.

Note: Ensure you do not change the value's character length.

And there you have it

Update: I have found it easiest to just change the value of the second column of numbers and simply pasting it over the first one is the quickest and most reliable way.

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