When the same formatting job keeps coming up, I write a script or macro to handle it. I’ve been automating parts of my typesetting work for about ten years, and work that takes half an hour by hand can often be done in a few minutes.
It started with small macros I’d write in the middle of a project. If I could tell a job was going to involve the same fix over and over, I’d stop and write a quick macro for it, like replacing double spaces with single spaces or removing spaces before periods.
Quality Checking
Before a file goes back to a client, I go through a quality checklist. Over the years I’ve written macros that check for and fix most of the items on it automatically, including:
- Double spaces
- Double periods
- Spaces before periods
- Three periods that should be an ellipsis
- Missing non-breaking spaces before colons, semicolons, exclamation marks and question marks in French
Because it’s a script, every file gets checked the same way, however big the job is.
Translating Form Tooltips
Fillable PDF forms have a tooltip behind every field, and checkboxes and radio buttons also have export values. When a form is translated, all of those need translating too. Doing it by hand means opening each field’s properties one at a time and typing in the translation, which can take hours depending on the size of the form.
So I wrote a script for Acrobat that exports every field name, page number, tooltip and export value into a spreadsheet. The translator works in the spreadsheet like any other text, and the script imports the translations back into the form. What used to take hours now takes a few minutes, and no field gets missed. The script works with any language, leaves the field names untouched so the form’s data still comes through, and lists any fields it couldn’t update so I can check them by hand.
Working Together
If you have a repetitive job that’s eating up your team’s time, send me a sample and tell me what you do to it. I’ll let you know what can be automated. I can build a script for your team to use, or do the work myself with the script included.
