Actions: Take filelist from textfile

[FrankW123]

I have a big, automatically-generated list of scanned files with full path (which are scattered througout my home directory), where I forgot to do the OCR. I would like to use my standard OCR action to process all of these.

Is there a way to have Acrobat XI Pro use that list directly in an action, that is without adding each file or directory manually in the add files-dialog of an action?

I thought about using the command line, but failed to find a command to invoke an action from the command line as well.

My most clumsy workaround would be: Remember the current locations, move all relevant files to a temporary directory, process that directory, move them back, which is not too nice.

This is on Windows 10.

Thanks, Frank

[try67 · Accepted solution]

You can't use a list of files as the input for an Action.

However, if what the Action does can be achieved using a script then you can use a script to read in this file and process the files defined in it, one after another.

If you must use an Action then your suggestion to copy those files to a temporary folder and then process that folder is probably the best one. It might even be possible to use a script and save the resulting files in their proper location, directly from the Action. But you will need to clear that temp folder yourself after running it. It can't do it for you.

[FrankW123]

Thank you for the quick answer. I see my mistake: Yes, scripting rather than using an action would do the trick. However, I am not that experienced in Javascript to do it myself. So I will probably go for the messy workaround.

Thanks, Frank

[try67]

If you're interested in hiring someone to do it for you, feel free to contact me privately and we could discuss it further.