I'm using Acrobat Professional 9.0 (CS3) for Mac to edit the metadata for a collection of PDFs to be made available on the web. When I enter the data, I am inputting a list of authors separated by commas, like this: Smith J, Watson C, Brown J. If I click on "Additional metadata", the data I've already entered is transposed into the various XMP fields. And the commas separating the author names are changed to semi-colons. I gather that this happens because XMP wants to separate multiple authors with semi-colons, and Acrobat wants the metadata in XMP fields to match the metadata stored for the file properties. Fine.

However, if I save such a PDF and then use Get Info on my Mac (OSX 10.4) to look at the file properties, the list of authors is now truncated where the first semi-colon appears. The list is also truncated in Windows XP if I right-click and select properties. The list is also truncated when I look at the file properties in Preview on my Mac, or if I look at file properties using FoxIT, or using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 or earlier. The only way a site visitor will actually be able to view the full list of authors in a file saved this way is to use Adobe Reader version 8 or later.

I would like to preserve XMP/Dublin Core/etc metadata in the proper format in the XMP code, but would also like users of standard, popular file viewers to be able to access the full list of authors. Is there a way to do this with Acrobat 9?

Also, once I've saved a file and the XMP metadata has been altered, Acrobat seems to permanently change the way that the authors are listed in the file properties. I cannot manually change those settings any longer without Acrobat overriding my changes and converting commas to semi-colons, or surrounding the entire list of authors in quotation marks. Is there a way to get around these Acrobat overrides and manually take control of my metadata again?

Does Windows Vista read the authors list correctly in the file properties if it is separated by semi-colons?

It seems to me that in an attempt to get XMP metadata working smoothly across the entire CS line, Adobe has jumped the gun somewhat and is now forcing Acrobat users to use "file properties" metadata that is really only fully compatible with Adobe products. Is there a way I can get some backwards compatibility on this?

Thanks for any suggestions or insight anyone can provide to this vexing issue.

Phil.

Not time to check at the moment but do you have Bridge? Try the XMP core
inside the bridge to see if this suits you better?

Let us know


Jon

Thanks for the suggestion, Jon. I've got the full CS 3 Design Premium, so I'll check into Bridge tomorrow when I'm back at the office. I haven't used Bridge at all and so am not familiar with even its basic functions.

In the meantime, I discovered that Preview and "Get Info" on Mac OS X will actually read the list of authors correctly if it is surrounded by quotation marks. I assumed that the business of inserting quotation marks was some kind of weird bug, but maybe that is in fact the way that Acrobat allows one to achieve what I am looking for. If so, it is a bit of a hassle, since I have to edit the author entries after I've created them, but it is not unmanageable.

Perhaps what is a bit more annoying is that I cannot find any documentation or support info for these functions anywhere on the Adobe site, and if the quotation marks are indeed the solution, then it is a weird solution that should be clearly documented somewhere.

Phil.

Bridge has some pretty powerful and helpful features. However, I am unable to figure out how to access the non-XMP "file properties" fields through Bridge, and if I add metadata via Bridge, then I run into the same problem regarding the use of semi-colons to separate authors.

If I had more time, or a larger set of files I might investigate the use of ExtendScript to import all my metadata from an Excel file (where it already exists) into the PDF file properties and XMP metadata.

The best solution for my case though appears to be to use Acrobat 9 and to do the double-edit process for each file. I should be able to just cut-and-paste the metadata from the Excel file, and then if I save the Authors list to the end, I can simply paste it once into the XMP field (through the Advanced metadata button) and then return to the regular file properties page and paste it again in there, where Acrobat will add quotes around it.

Lastly, if anyone else happens to find this post and is looking for similar information, I would recommend searching in the Bridge forum as well as the Acrobat forum.

Phil.

Hi Philip,

Have you looked into the use of the custom key inside Acrobat / Properties ?

This might help you?

Jon