Adding metadata to document properties

To make a PDF easier to search, you can add file information, called metadata, to the document properties. (You can see the properties for the currently open PDF by choosing File > Document Properties, and clicking the Description tab.)

(Windows) You can also enter and read the data properties information from the desktop. Right-click the document in Windows Explorer, choose Properties, and click the PDF tab. Any information you type or edit in this dialog box also appears in the Document Properties Description when you open the file.

When adding data for document properties, consider the following recommendations:

• Use a good descriptive title in the Title field. The file name of the document should appear in the Search Results dialog box.

• Always use the same option (field) for similar information. For example, don’t add an important term to the Subject option for some documents and to the Keywords option for others.

• Use a single, consistent term for the same information. For example, don’t use biology for some documents and life sciences for others.

• Use the Author option to identify the group responsible for the document. For example, the author of a hiring policy document might be the Human Resources department.

• If you use document part numbers, add them as keywords. For example, adding doc#=m234 in Keywords could indicate a specific document in a series of several hundred documents on a particular subject.

• Use the Subject or Keywords option, either alone or together, to categorize documents by type. For example, you might use status report as a Subject entry and monthly or weekly as a Keywords entry for a single document.

  If you already have specialized training in Adobe PDF, you can define custom data fields, such as Document Type, Document Number, and Document Identifier, when you create the index. This is recommended only for advanced users and is not covered in Acrobat Complete Help.