How can I change text in a large number PDFs?

Question

I have about 100 PDF files that each contain a string of text that needs to be replaced. This is to fix a typographical error that was repeated all over the place. Is there any tool or techniques I can use for doing this string replacement as a batch process across all the files, rather than updating each file one at a time, using Acrobat Pro?

Answer 1

You can use the trial version of A-PDF Text Replace to do a batch replacement job.

Answer 2

One possible solution would be to: 1) Merge the individual PDFs into one PDF using Acrobat Pro.
2) Convert that one PDF into a word file (save -as function in Acrobat Pro). 3) Use MS Office to find and replace the text.
4) Convert the PDF back into a PDF file. There is a plug-in for MS Office 2007 and above for this ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041 ). Also you could install a PDF print driver and then print the word doc to a PDF file. Bullzip ( http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php ) is just one free utility. 5) Then split the one PDF into individual PDFs using the split function in Acrobat Pro.

Note: If the original PDF's are images of the text (ie scanned and not converted to text by OCR) then this would not work.