How can I tell SharePoint about PDF meta-information (author, subject, keywords)?

Question

I have a bunch of PDF files that have information in their 'Author', 'Subject', and 'Keywords' fields (I can see the values in Adobe Reader).

When I'm in SharePoint:

• I can search for text in the Author field, and it will return the correct list of matching files, but there doesn't seem to be any way in SharePoint to view the Author field of a PDF. (BTW, same thing for the 'Title' field)
• Searching for text in the Subject or Keywords fields doesn't work.

Is there a way to get OneDrive/SharePoint (a plugin maybe?) that will get it to search all the fields in a PDF, and to show those fields?

Answer 1

Hi @Chris Shearer Cooper,

Thank you for posting in this community.

I understand you well if we can search the document properties of PDF files. But I am sorry to say that it is very difficult for us to extract the document properties of PDF in SharePoint since PDF files are not developed by Microsoft. There is also no related plugin to support this feature.

But we have a roundabout way that we can manually create the appropriate columns for these document properties of PDF files and populate them.

Every column in SharePoint is automatically created with managed properties and crawled, which also makes them searchable. Converting a search of document properties of PDF files into a search of column values can also achieve the search results you want.

Note: After you have created the columns and populated them with values, you need to wait a while for SharePoint to finish crawling them before you can search for them. Crawling is a timed task.

Also, for me personally, I think it's important that document properties of PDF files can be extracted in SharePoint because PDF is becoming more and more widely used. We suggest that you can make suggestions on this SharePoint Feedback portal for this feature. I will vote for you.

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