Re: OT:macros or software?

Philip Herlihy wrote:
Mr Sandman wrote:
Hi all,

need to ask a question, but not sure where to ask it, so i thought as you
lot have a lot of time spent on Windows, someone will be able to help!

Basically i want a program that will monitor a folder on my hard drive, and
when a .PDF (searchable PDF) file is stored there, search it for certain
words and depending on weather those words are found in that document, move it to a predetermined folder.

I heard i could do this with a macro....but not sure how to do it. But is
there something already out there that will do this for me? If this is not
the best place to ask this question...any suggestions as to where ask it?

Best regards all,

Steve

Easy enough if it were a text document, or even Word, as you could write a DOS script, or a VBS script if you had to load Word to read Word documents, although writing such a script can be harder to a beginner than some might think.

As the content is PDF, the puzzle is how to search through that in a script. I know Adobe Acrobat Professional (not the Reader) has a JavaScript capability which might do the trick, but you'd need to have that program available (not cheap) if it turned out that it will do what you want. I suppose you could try running Word with the "recover text from any document" component installed - you'd want to program Word itself (VBA), as the naive scripter's trick of starting a new Word process for every file in the folder will slow the process to a crawl. You might like to try asking the question in comp.text.pdf.

Might be possible to use ghostscript to get at the ascii text in the pdf. If it were me, I'd be looking at a perl script plus ghostscript (possibly in the shape of pdf2ps and ps2ascii).


Anyway, it's a pretty hideous thing to have to do. You're going to search, regularly, through every file in a folder for a string, just in case a new file contains it? I bet there's a better solution...

I agree. I remember being told once "if you want to go there, don't start here". Maybe the OP should say what the /real/ problem is, rather than asking for completion of a part, kludge-looking solution.


--
Mike Scott (unet <at> scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex England
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT:macros or software?
    ... when a .PDF file is stored there, ... words and depending on weather those words are found in that document, move it to a predetermined folder. ... Easy enough if it were a text document, or even Word, as you could write a DOS script, or a VBS script if you had to load Word to read Word documents, although writing such a script can be harder to a beginner than some might think. ... OK the goal is to put the numerous files scattered everywhere on the computer at work into easy to use folders for my staff to access simply. ...
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  • Re: OT:macros or software?
    ... when a .PDF file is stored there, ... words and depending on weather those words are found in that document, move it to a predetermined folder. ... Easy enough if it were a text document, or even Word, as you could write a DOS script, or a VBS script if you had to load Word to read Word documents, although writing such a script can be harder to a beginner than some might think. ... OK the goal is to put the numerous files scattered everywhere on the computer at work into easy to use folders for my staff to access simply. ...
    (uk.comp.homebuilt)
  • Re: OT:macros or software?
    ... when a .PDF file is stored there, ... words and depending on weather those words are found in that document, move it to a predetermined folder. ... Easy enough if it were a text document, or even Word, as you could write a DOS script, or a VBS script if you had to load Word to read Word documents, although writing such a script can be harder to a beginner than some might think. ... If the string was in the name of the file it would be less work - you can set up the rather marvellous "robocopy" but that won't read inside a file, and certainly not a pdf! ...
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  • Re: OT:macros or software?
    ... Basically i want a program that will monitor a folder on my hard drive, ... when a .PDF file is stored there, ... a DOS script, or a VBS script if you had to load Word to read Word ... computer at work into easy to use folders for my staff to access simply. ...
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