General information about Acrobat development

[mathieu_91]

Dear Community,

I am searching for a method to automate a working process with PDF files. The automation should be able to open a bunch of PDFs out of a folder, split them into single files and automatically search for a string and a date, combining the corresponding PDFs together und "safe as" the PDF files in another folder.

Is there any way to do so without the need of a key?

Do I need the SDK for that?

Can I simply script it in C++ as kind of a macro like in MS office?

Do I have to let it be certified by adobe?

Do I need to be certified to create such a routine?

What are my options in this case?

Thank you very much and regards

Mathieu

[Thom Parker · Accepted solution]

Acrobat Professional has a feature called Actions.  In this context an Action is a batch sequence, a series of series of user defined commands that can be run against a user defined list of files or folders. One of the commands is "Execute a JavaScript", and everything you've asked about can be done with a script.  So all you need is Acrobat Professional, the ability to write JavaScript, and the Acrobat SDK.

Here are some links that will help.

Acrobat DC SDK Documentation

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/Automating-Acrobat.cfm

[mathieu_91]

Awesome, thank you very much for the help.

I found the mentioned Action Manager.

Do you have an information on how to implement the Acrobat SDK into the Acrobat's own Java editor or is it already implemented?

We have the version 2017.011.30102 installed, so I believe I can use the newest SDK?

Adobe - Acrobat Developer Center | Adobe Developer Connection

Kind regards

Mathieu

[Bernd Alheit]

The Acrobat SDK contains the documentation about Acrobat JavaScript.

Info: Acrobat uses JavaScript, not Java.

[lrosenth]

Also, since you say you are proficient in C++ - you can also do some/all of this work as an Acrobat plugin in C/C++

[mathieu_91]

Ok, but are you sure, that I don't need any licence or certification by adobe to do so?

[Test Screen Name]

Each and every person who uses the actions must be a licensed user of paid-for Acrobat (NOT the free Acrobat Reader). They cannot automate it for others or for a server, or a background process. But actions are a feature any licensed user of Acrobat can use.

[Thom Parker]

You'll find two Actions here that perform some of what you are looking for.

https://acrobatusers.com/actions-exchange

One of the actions finds and highlights words (with an annotation), the other extracts pages that contain annotations.  The code for these tools can be combined and modified to build a single result PDF, rather than extracting the pages separately.