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TPK

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PowerPoint files converted to PDF losing metadata. Setting to use to preserve converted metadata?

Jan 14, 2011 7:30 AM

Good morning,

I am working with Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 9. I am converting PowerPoint files to PDFs. (The purpose of file conversion is to “lock” the content so that people can’t change it.) These PDFs go on our company Intranet, so they need their descriptive metadata.

I want the Acrobat files to have 2 slides per page oriented one slide on top of the other so I am using the “Print to” functionality.

I open PowerPoint, select “Print”, then under the name of the printer I select “Adobe PDF”, next, in the print controls under “Print what”, I select “handouts” (rather than the default “slides”). Now, under the Handouts control (in the Print controls) I can select the number of slides per page and the page orientation.

When I do this the (PDF) document looks OK but the properties metadata (description, keywords, etc.) gets dropped and does not appear in the new PDF. I have to add it manually to each individual PDF.

Can anyone tell me why the metadata is being dropped? (Because this is a PowerPoint handout?) Is there a setting I can use so that metadata properties are included?

Additionally, I have Acrobat Pro 9.0 that I use when I don’t need 2 slides per page (horizontally) and when I want to batch process a group of PowerPoint files. When I use Acrobat Pro the metadata properties come through fine. However, I can not orient the document with 2 slides per page one slide on top of the other using Acrobat Pro. Is there a setting in Acrobat Pro where I can properly orient a 2 slides per page PDF?

Thank you,

TPK

1490 Views 3 Replies Latest reply: TPK, Jan 15, 2011 9:30 AM

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1. GKaiseril,

Jan 14, 2011 7:44 AM in reply to TPK

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When you print to paper, do the properties of PowerPoint print? It is a user settable option.

Printing is not converting, It is printing to virtual paper instead of physical paper.

Acrobat Professional can add a tool button to Microsoft Office that provides another method for creating a PDF by processing the MS Office document that create working links, bookmarks as user specified, and copy the MS Office user properties. You will need to enable this macro in MS Office and change the PDF Maker conversion settings.

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2. CtDave,

Jan 14, 2011 3:22 PM in reply to TPK

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TPK,

George addressed the essence of the issue faced.
Behind it, the driver (with PowerPoint) is that the premise of "Handout" is a direct-to-paper approach as far as PowerPoint is concerned. So, no need/value in providing the file's document properties information. So, PowerPoint provides none of this information to an installed printer driver (which, effectively, Adobe Printer is).

You can configure PowerPoint such that it provides the "Handout" configuration (with 2 slides per page) to Adobe PDFMaker. But, again, "Handout" configuration does not include document properties; nor does it support output of Tags, bookmarks, links, or notes.
In sum, a "by design" issue of PowerPoint rather than something amiss with Acrobat's provided Adobe Printer of Adobe PDFMaker.
As far as I can determine this is the case through Office 2007.

Now, you could make a copy of the PDFMaker output of the standard "slide" configuration and work it with the TouchUp Object tool. A given PDF page's "slide" can be sized smaller and rotated. Position this slide to the upper part of a page.
Manipulate the second pages "slide". Move it to the first page. Once done, deleted the unoccupied PDF pages.
Note that you may have to rotate the PDF pages from a landscape orientation to portrait first.

Interesting activity but time consuming.
Quicker & easier to just re-enter the document info to the "Handout" PDF that has 2 slides per page.
With Acrobat Pro you could pre-stage a Batch Sequence or Action for use to populate the PDF's document information.

Be well...

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3. TPK,

Jan 15, 2011 9:30 AM in reply to CtDave

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Thank you GKaiseril and CtDave,

Both of your answers were helpful and confirmed what I suspected. It is part of the functionality of PowerPoint. "Handouts" (as described by CtDave) infer "printouts". Why would you want metadata for something that is printed? Too true.

Having said that (and essentially agree with the philosophy), there is a need for the flexibility of including metadata in a "handout" (at lease in my opinion). The 2-up PDF that is generated for our purposes is destined as a document that can be accessed via our company Intranet. The document is password locked in this fashion to prevent users from altering the content, however for easy "search" using our Intranet search function, all documents need to contain metadata.

So, I guess we need to add the each document's metadata after the document has been converted to a PDF but before the password lock has been enabled.

Thank you both for taking the time to answer my post.

Cheers,

TPK

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