hi exiftool forum
i've been digging through existing documentation but haven't found a solution to my metadata problem...
THE ISSUE - I need to modify TITLE level metadata for hundreds of PDFs - Ultimately, I need to modify case from all caps to Capitalize Each Word (except prepositions) - I should be able to make these bulk edits easily in Open Refine or Excel. I'd like to use EXIFTOOL to download all of the relevant metadata into a csv so I can make updates and then use EXIFTOOL again to reupload the csv and apply the changes at the file level.
I've been able to create a csv and can modify how the data displays for me in Excel, but I worry that I won't be able to reupload the new metadata with EXIFTOOL if I change the structure too much.
QUESTION - Can someone help me with create two commands? The first to JUST download the FILENAME, FILESIZE, FILETYPE, TITLE, CREATOR for MANY PDFS from a single folder into a csv? Ideally, I would be able to format the data by columns so each category is in its own column. The second command I need would be to apply to updated csv to the files the original data came from.
Thank you!
Is this an XMP or PDF Title tag? Assuming PDF, you can create the CSV like this:
exiftool -filesize -filetype -pdf:title -pdf:creator -csv -ext pdf DIR > out.csv
The file name and directory are automatically added as a first SourceFile column. The FileType column is likely not necessary because the command uses the -ext option to process only PDF files.
Then import the new titles after editing:
exiftool -csv=out.csv -ext pdf DIR
- Phil
THANK YOU phil! the download worked -- i'll message if i have any issues with the upload
Just one note: I should have added -g to the first command so the group name is added to the column headings. Otherwise when you read the CSV back again, Title will get written to both XMP and PDF. But all you need to do is change the column headings before you run the second command from "Title,Creator" to "PDF:Title,PDF:Creator" to write only the PDF tags.
- Phil