Stripping PDF Metadata..

[delooch]

Whats the easiest way to strip ALL metedata from a PDF?

im sure theres a couple of ways to tackle this.

[mattbeals]

Why would you want to strip the metadata? I guess if you *really* wanted to you could use the PDF Optimizer in Acrobat...

[gnubler]

Are you referring to the info displayed when you view Document Info? (Apple-D in Acrobat)

I was wondering the same thing, as I recently created a PDF for a client to put on their website for download and I didn't particularly want the Document Info to show my name and my hard drive/file path name. I looked around in PDF Optimizer and didn't see a way to edit those fields. I resaved the PDF in Apple's Preview and the info went away.

[delooch]

these are legal 'discovery' documents from our attorneys office. they are all scanned in then have 'bates' numbering applied to them through acrobat. we do the majority of it here, but sometimes our attorneys tackle it themselves.. sometimes these pdfs are created directly from word/wp docs..

what they dont want is ANY info other than the image content falling into the wrong hands.

they want it all stripped. apparently some jackass was bragging to them about how he knew what/when/where and whos PC they were created on. Plus, they dont want any edits/comments/redaction showing up either. and some have been OCR'd, and since its not 100% accurate, they dont want inaccurate OCR info embedded in the document.

I know they make applications that do this specifically for the legal trade for word docs and PDF's.. but as usual, i need to do this fo' free.

i can use the 'analyze document' command to strip it, but i cant perform that action in a batch process (there are like 300 files i need to strip), and i know nothing about java/actionscripts to write my own..

my other option, since these are all rasterized images anyway, was to perform an import/export batch command in photoshop, but i dont know if the XML data is going to stick.

[gnubler]

I'm sure Mattbeals has the solution for this.

[delooch]

this has turned out to be quite the pain in the ass. im stuck doing it on a file-by-file basis.  the photshop action almost worked, but it chokes on multiple page pdfs.  oh well, at least this will improve my billable hours for the week...

[David]

delooch, do you have Pitstop?
and, what version of Acro you running?

[David]

just did a google search on this, apparently this is a big business, removing metadata from legal files:

http://www.google.com/search?q=remove+metadata+from+a+pdf&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

over 200,000 hits
some are cheep, some are not

[delooch]

yeah, i didnt realize there was such a market for that..

im running Acrobat 8 on WinXP with PitStop Pro 6.1.  Also have Acrobat 7 on a few pcs, as well as Acro 9 still in its wrapper. - im hesitating installing the cs4 suite until the workload slows down..

[David]

you do know there is a Pitstop action for removing metadata?
you could probably set up a batch/hotfolder to do them all.

Have you checked into that?

[delooch]

david- no, i didnt even think about pitstop. ill give that a try, thanks!

[mattbeals]

PDF Optimizer in Acrobat does a good job. It should take care of what you need. If you want to automate the process you need Callas pdfAutoOptimizer, but it's also $2600.00.

[delooch]

PDF Optimizer in Acrobat does a good job. It should take care of what you need. If you want to automate the process you need Callas pdfAutoOptimizer, but it's also $2600.00.

thanks matt. i saw that, which works fine on a file by file basis.. i wish they let you access that in batch processing. ive got hundreds to go through.

just looking for an easy way out this once, i think they are buying into some software to automate this in the future..

[gnubler]

Meatballs, I tried PDF Optimizer (Acro Pro CS1) and it did not remove my name and hard drive/file path info in document properties.

[David]

meatballs



LOL
you one funneh gurl!