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Showing posts from January, 2020

Changing PDF Metadata with Python

While updating a pdf recently, I noticed some metadata I wanted to change and a few annotations that were hidden from view but still in the file. However, the "Get Info" pane in Preview on OS X doesn't provide a metadata editor, nor does its Export function, so it seemed like a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the PDF standard and Python packages for getting the job done. Adobe Acrobat or other GUI's would've been much faster, but I'll likely need to do this programmatically again at some point like those of you who might've found this post by looking on your favorite privacy-preserving search engine for "change pdf metadata in python". So here we go. Before starting, I hopped into a new folder and created a git repository with a first commit of my original pdf in case anything went wrong. Then I ran conda create --name pdf --python=3.8.1 and conda activate pdf to set up an Anaconda virtual Environment named pdf to keep my work is