File naming - extra space in name

[act_98006]

Unfortunately I have only a rudimentary knowledge of my client's set-up and I am trying to help them out.  They are not the most savvy of ID users.

They are sending us press-ready PDF files to be fed  into our pre-press system.  The files are prepared OK however, it seems when he makes his files, an extra space is added in the file name.

He is using InDesign CS5.5 and creating his PDF file.  He tells me that his InDesign files are name properly but when they export the extra space is showing up.  This is an issue because we feed his files into our PrePress system that is not expecting an extra space.

The extra space seems to show up at the same spot on all files. The files are named like this:

TMSN_201001_A 2.pdf

TMSN_201001_A 1.pdf

With a space between the "A" and the number.

We need it to look like this with no spaces.

TMSN_201001_A2.pdf

TMSN_201001_A1.pdf

We usually receive a substantial number of files and manually fixing the names is a bit of hassle.  I am curious if anyone knows what causing this extra space and how we can prevent it from showing up in his files?  As with many client with limited understanding of technical issues, he has little patience and figures things should work.  My suggestions for experiments to try to identify the problem are met with complaints about how much of his time fixing the problem is taking....

[Derek Cross · Accepted solution]

You could ask your customer to send you the native InDesign files (or even better, Package them) and you can then produce the PDF to suit your workflow -- I assume you subscribe to InDesign.

[David Popham · Accepted solution]

Given the attitude of the client, it would probably require looking over his shoulder to see what is happening. If he's not amenable to that, a batch renaming solution might at least help minimize the effort on your end. You could use Bridge's Batch Rename feature with Use Regular Expression enabled to quickly edit the file names.

If the string is consistent like the example you posted, and the number at the end is always a single-digit, then the following Find/Replace strings would work.

Find: ([A-Z])\s(\d)(?=\.pdf)

Replace with: $1$2

See the attached screenshot for additional settings.