Finding PDF Invoices, Combining them with Purchase Orders and Check Copies

Questions & Suggestions
7

I have adobe pro, wondershare, abby reader and a few others

8

If you don't want to do everything by hand you need one that's AppleScriptable.

9

Which one would you suggest?

10

I don't have scripting experience with any of the apps you've listed.

The only app I have recent experience scripting is PDFpenPro (now Nitro PDF Pro).

It looks like someone at Nitro has half a brain – they've improved the AppleScript dictionary and made batch OCR easier.

I'm present inquiring as to what they want to charge me for an upgrade from PDFpenPro 11 and looking at the demo of v13.3.1.

11

Thank you so much Christopher - let me try this right now and ill get right back to you.

12

Can any of your apps batch OCR PDFs?

I'm not going to guarantee the quality of Nitro's OCR, because I haven't used the product since they bought it from Smile.

I did just run a test with the current version and wasn't fully satisfied with its ability to detect whether a PDF needed to be OCR'd.

Try running this macro on a couple or three of your non-ocr'd files:

If you get what I expect I can probably write you a macro to do the testing.

13

Chris - this is great! It seems to be working just fine

14

That macro only finds text in text capable PDFs.

Have you found any that don't contain text yet?

The pop-up window shoud be entirely blank or only have a very few garbled characters.

15

Let me keep trying here and I'll get right back to you - so like a hand written one correct?

16

Okay so yes, I've found some that it does not work on.

17

What does it produce?

Ideally nothing...

18

yes thats correct - absolutely nothing

19

the text box is empty

20

Okay, how are you going to find all the PDFs?

They're scattered all over Dropbox – yes?

I'd probably create a smart-search in the Finder – or more likely HoudahSpot, since I own a copy.

21

Yea tha'ts what i'd likely have to do - i can purchase houdah spot? I have alfred as well

22

HoudahSpot is a better interface for Spotlight than the macOS provides but is not necessary for this task.

A simple smart-search in the Finder will do, so go ahead and create one.

23

copy - okay ive set up a smart search

24

Having technical challenges and changing my approach.

Stand by...

25

thank you chris

26

Do you know how to use the Terminal?

Download Xpdf

  • Mac 64-bit: download
  • Unzip the file.
  • Open up the bin64 folder.
  • Open the Terminal.app.
  • Type cd\<space\> (a literal space) into the Terminal
  • Drag the bin64 folder into the Terminal
  • Hit Return.
  • Type: ./pdffonts -h and then hit Return.

If you get output we'll talk about how to install the tools and move forward.