I work with a suite of designers who use InDesign CC to create documents they export to PDF for uploading to our website. The designers enter keywords in the file information and separate them with commas. However, when they export the document to PDF all of the commas get changed to semicolons, which I understand is bad for Search Engine Optimization.
So two questions:
1.) Is there a setting somewhere we are missing to make sure our commas are retained?
2.) Does it even matter if keywords are separated by a semicolon vs. comma. Will the keywords still be picked up by search engines?
It is not possible to retain the commas. The same thing happens when keywords are entered in other Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. It doesn't matter if keywords are separated by semicolon or comma.
Neither the comma's nor the semicolons are actually present in the PDF. They are stored separately in a kind of list. It's just the way the information is shown in Acrobat Reader.
Sorry if my original reply posts more than once. The site kept telling me there was some sort of error, try again later. But at the same time, I got an email confirmation of my post. So, I'll stop trying now. 😉
I've been having this problem with InDesign for about 10 years now. The File Info dialog says you can use semicolons or commas. But it should say "Use commas if you want, but we're gonna change them to semicolons as soon as you hit OK." Problem is: the website for which I'm creating my PDFs only supports commas for keyword and/or author lists. At least, neither the admin settings nor the documentation (of the background site architecture) mentions the use of any delimiter than comma. As smart as InDesign is, surely there's a way to make it stop doing that. I guess now I'll be looking for some kind of script to change the metadata semicolons in a collection of PDFs. What about it Adobe - any sort of solution?
Comma delimiters are the old standard from 20-30 years ago. About 15 years ago, the industry switched to semicolons. I doubt Adobe will go back to commas.
| Bevi Chagnon | Designer & Technologist for Accessible Documents | Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
I have the same issue. Looks like it's an "undocumented program feature." 🪳 No matter how many times I replace semicolons with commas, InDesign puts the semi's right back in next time I open the file. I just have to replace semicolons with commas in Acrobat in the keyword section of the PDF's document info. Reviewers looking at the PDFs in SharePoint complained they could not make comments in the PDF, and our organization's tech people said the commas are to blame. (I personally think they are looking at the PDFs in a browser window, not Acrobat). The tech people also said I should stop using InDesign and do all my layout in Microsoft Word (bring on the Pepto-Bismol). It would be nice if Adobe's code-writers could fix the commas vs. semicolon "feature" in the next version of InDesign..
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