Finding and replacing text on a PDF page

[T_Rex]

I do make an AppleScript once in a blue moon. Most are very simple.

Currently I am aiming to identify one of several open Acrobat PDF documents that has a certain text string on its first page, then replace some page numbers in a table of contents list on that page based on page numbers retrieved from another PDF file.

So I have no clue how to perform the work of identifying the specific Acrobat file to begin with, and also I need to search the first page text to find the specific strings with the page numbers.
Once I get that text, I should be able to replace text as needed.

If scripting dictionaries had solid examples of how to call out the commands, it would help immensely.

Thanks for your help!

[Marc_Anthony]

Hi. Text is often randomly shattered into fragments by conversion, so even finding strings in a PDF file won’t be reliable; you might chance upon hitting a few keywords. Editing a PDF via AppleScript is something of a pipe dream. You can automate editing the build files in a page layout program, such as InDesign or XPress.

[T_Rex]

Thanks for the hope!

I will persist anyway.

First step, I want to know how to do the find text syntax from the Adobe Acrobat AppleScript dictionary.

This is what the dictionary says:

find text v : Find text in a document.
find text [specifier] : The document to search.
string text : The string to search for.
[Case sensitive boolean] : Whether searching is case sensitive.
[whole words boolean] : Whether to search for a whole word match.

[wrap around boolean] : Whether searches should wrap-around to continue from beginning of document if not found by end of document (default is no).
→ text : The found word.

So this is what I started with and of course doesn’t work:

tell application "Adobe Acrobat"
	set docname to name of active doc
	set text2find to "Contents"
	if find text text2find in page 1 of document docname then
		beep 3
	else
		beep 1
	end if
end tell/applescript]

So I get the error: "Adobe Acrobat got an error: text2find of page 1 of document "3022-O FL HIM Care Choice AUG20.pdf" doesn’t understand the “find text” message."