This tutorial shows you how to work with the JavaScript features in Acrobat X. See what the all-new Acrobat DC can do for you.

In previous versions of Acrobat this was called Batch Processing, and there is a treasure trove of information on creating and using Actions in articles and videos on this site. There is also an Actions Exchange , offering all kinds of fancy Actions — created by users — that can be downloaded.

The “commands” that make up an Action are, for the most part, the standard operations on the regular menu items and tools in Acrobat , such as deleting a page or applying security. Anyone who is already familiar with Actions will know these commands are fairly static. They are set up to perform a specific activity, such as deleting page five of a PDF.

There is no way to set up the page-delete command to be more flexible, for example, to delete the second-to-last page, for which the specific page number will change with the document length. To create an Action where the operational parameters are flexible requires scripting, and fortunately, the Actions Command Palette includes a command that runs JavaScript Figure 1.

It is worth the time to examine the scripts in these actions. It is simply not possible to get the kind of advance functionality used in these Actions any other way. This article will explore the rules and techniques for writing such scripts. Figure 1 — The Execute JavaScript command provides the only way to apply automatic, non-interactive flexibility to an Action.

There are some big advantages to running a script in an Action, as well as a number of serious limitations. It’s important to understand both sides in order to write efficient, error-free scripts. In addition, as we’ll see, to get the most out of an Action Script, a little creativity is needed to work around some of the limitations. Most of the scripting used in an Action is very straightforward, and is written in exactly the same way as the code placed in a folder-level trusted function.

For example, here is a single line of code that places the file name along the bottom edge of all pages in the PDF using the watermark function. The script is simple, but it makes a custom change to the PDF that could not be done with any of the other Action Commands. If the document has an existing watermark, the new footer text is added to that watermark, so the code does not destroy anything already on the PDF.

Notice that event. In this code, the ” this ” keyword could also have been used, but using the official, and explicit reference to the document object is a much better practice.

Saving to a custom file name: The Actions Dialog provides several options for saving the files operated on, including options for renaming the files with prefixes and postfixes. However, these additions to the file name are static. A script is the only way to provide a flexible, custom-file-name option. For example, here is a short script that appends the current date to the file name and saves it into a subfolder of the original file.

It seems like there is a lot to this script, but it is really just a simple set of text manipulations to build the destination file name and path. Building a report file This technique is very useful for analyzing documents. The code in that example is very complex. A simplified version will be presented here. For this example, a script will be created that reports the number of pages for each document run through the Action.

It was stated earlier that there is no way for the script to know whether a document is the first or last in the process, so a method is needed that does not depend on detecting the beginning or end of the Action process. To deal with this issue, the script will use the report document itself. If no report document is open, then one will be opened.

If it is open, then the script will add information to it. In this example, it is assumed there is a generic report document, available in a known location. It is also assumed that the report document contains a list field where the collected data will be placed. This layer blocks operations that don’t fit with Acrobat’s sense of rightness.

JavaScript operations or errors that relate to external resources on the web or local file system tend to spook this security layer, which then throws out miscellaneous security errors. If you work with Acrobat JavaScript for any length of time, you’ll find all sorts of operations that have nothing to do with security, but nonetheless generate security errors.

We can also create our own messages for display in the Console Window. This object provides a few functions for manipulating and accessing the Console Window, but for our purposes here the console. This function displays a single line of text on the next available line in the Console Window. The following line of code displays the words “Hello Acrobat.

The console. Just place a few console. It is up to the developer to decide what information to display. This information should be relevant to the state of the script.

For example, the following line helps us understand how JavaScript events work in Acrobat. The code can be placed in any script location in a PDF file. It is a good practice to use this code or something like it whenever you start a new document scripting project to get a feel for how the different scripts will interact. Watch the Console Window to monitor the sequence of scripts that are executed as you open and close the document, navigate between pages, move the mouse around the document or perform other actions.

If you are developing scripts that will be used in Adobe Reader, then it is a good idea to be able to test and debug them in Reader. Adobe added Console Window support to Reader in version 7.

However, setting up Reader to actually display the Console Window was very difficult. It required installing special scripts and manually changing Acrobat settings in either the Windows Registry or the Macintosh settings files.

It has become much easier in Reader XI. There is only one thing you need to be able to do to use the Console Window, and that is to display it. Displaying the Console Window in Reader is a bit more difficult than one might think it should. Reader does not have the keyboard shortcut, a menu item, or a tool button for displaying the Debugger Window. This leaves only two options: create your own tool button or menu item or cause a deliberate error. This is how you throw exceptions in JavaScript.

But it isn’t the best method. A better technique is to create a tool button or menu item that displays the console directly with the “console. You can download a script for a tool button here,. And here is a handy script for adding a “Console Window” menu item to the “View” menu in Reader.

This script will need to be written into a file with the “. It is best to place it in the “User” folder. Use it early and often to test and debug scripts, and to automate processes in Acrobat. Try Acrobat DC. Learn how to edit PDF. Get started. Automating bookmark creation with Acrobat JavaScript. Rearrange PDF pages. Create PDF online. Convert Word to PDF online. Convert Excel to PDF online. Compress PDF online. Sign Microsoft Word documents. Create electronic signatures. Create digital signatures.

Create PDFs. Edit PDFs. Export PDFs. Combine Files. Review and Comment. Scan and Optimize. Mobile PDF. Protect PDFs. PDF Forms. Sign and Send PDFs. Print Production.

PDF Standards. Acrobat DC. Acrobat XI. Acrobat X. Acrobat 9. Acrobat Reader. Unfortunately, many of these tasks involve alot of manual work with Acrobat. I was hoping that I would be able to automate the process using the GUI, but this is not possible. Having a dedicated introduction to this variant of JS is extremely helpful as it prevents alot of wasted time learning about the unecessary part of JS. Many thanks once again.

Your email address will not be published. If the information you found on my site helped you to solve a problem, please consider to hire me for your next PDF related project. Skip to content. What is JavaScript?

Learning the JavaScript Core Language So, to learn JavaScript for Acrobat, you just take any introductory JavaScript book, class or tutorial and just read and learn the parts about the core language, and ignore the rest. You can run all the examples from both books in Acrobat if you keep a few simple rules in mind: Differences console. Bookmark the permalink.

February 6, at am. Hi, Thanks for this post! Here is another JavaScript book whose first chapter focuses on the heart of language. Eloquent JavaScript, 2nd Edition, , by Marijn haverbeke. Edward Dixon says:. August 19, at pm. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Tip Jar If the information you found on my site helped you to solve a problem, please consider to hire me for your next PDF related project.

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Applying actions and scripts to PDFs

Вот так и рождаются слухи. Я сказал ему, что японец отдал свое кольцо – но не. Да я бы ничего и не взял у умирающего.

Tutorials : JavaScript – Interesting tutorials

 
This guide is governed by the Adobe Acrobat SDK License Agreement and The JavaScript variable is created and is assigned a value of To learn how to create JavaScript scripts, download the JavaScript manuals from the Adobe website. Developing Acrobat®Applications Using.