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Subject:RE: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF? From:Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:<pgforums -at- gmx -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 8 Dec 2011 11:17:17 -0500
It's true that Acrobat's Document Properties dialog does display information from the PDF metadata "application" field. But how meaningful that information is depends on how the PDF was created.
For example, if you use Word's built-in PDF generation (the "Save As XPS or PDF" command) the document info will be something like "Microsoft® Office Word 2007", which is fine. But if you have Acrobat as well as MS Office on your system and use the Adobe PDF buttons on the ribbon, the document properties will indicate something like "PDFMaker 9.2 for Word" (you know it's Word, but you don't know what version). Or if you print to the Adobe PDF virtual printer or print to a PostScript file and then distill to PDF, the application info will only show something like "PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2" (not helpful at all).
And if the PDF was generated with some tool other than Acrobat, who knows whether the PDF tool will embed the application information in the document properties...
-Fred Ridder
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Re: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?
> Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 15:48:28 +0000
> From: pgforums -at- gmx -dot- com
>
> Look in File > Properties
> ________________________________________
>
> Peter Grainge
> www.grainge.org
>
>
> On Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:43:08 -0000, Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>
> wrote:
>
> > We are looking at some great sample documentation in PDF format, and
> > I've been asked to figure out what tools produced the PDF.
> > I think this is not possible, but I'm very willing to be wrong. Is there
> > a way to identify whether Word, Frame or some other tool produced a PDF?
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