Organize PDF Library in iBooks - Edit Meta-Data

Book Bedlam

Surely, each iBooks user over time accumulates a very rather large amount of literature in PDF. Despite the fact that the reader of iBooks is very useful, at some point it becomes annoying to be unable to edit the title and author of PDF files. As a result, original copies of PDF with alphanumeric symbols or notes of the PDF creator instead of names accumulate on the shelf, which does not allow you to correctly organize your library.



Trying to solve the problem using iTunes, I came across a completely useless function of changing the name and author in the “Information”. All changes, so painstakingly made to books and articles, either evaporated at the first synchronization, or in no way affected the displayed names. Everything turned out to be simple - iBooks pulls the title and the author from the meta-data.

An online search showed that the English-speaking community is also concerned about the need to edit their PDF tags, or rather the lack of this option in iBooks and iTunes ( thread on the official site ). Apple support is silent since 2010.
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Decision

I began by searching for a suitable program for editing meta-data (please do not worry to the happy owners of adobe reader pro; the author means a free, but reasonable alternative to it).
The first thing Google finds is the pdftk multiplatform suite. Alas, the author of the article in using the terminal is a complete layman, so the search for more friendly software continued. Those who wish can be found here .

A good, and most importantly free, alternative is PDFInfo . A few words about the features of the program:

• PDFInfo didn’t have a tragic relationship with the Russian language, so without fail we call folders and files in English (this will have little effect on sorting, and we won’t see the names of these in iBooks). I want to note that Russian characters should not be all the way to the file. C'est la vie.
• Protected PDF program, alas, does not open, but most of those that I met, were normally decorated.
• There is a log to track the success of the process, which periodically has to be used to see if the Russian letter in the name has not gotten to where.

And finally

If the library already has a bunch of “curves” PDF, then copy them to a safe place, if necessary, give new names and rule one by one in PDFInfo. We need the Author and Title fields, since they are only displayed when sorted in iBooks.



The work is painstaking, but worth it, if you strongly desire to restore order. After editing all the files, you can download them to iTunes and sync with your iPhone / iPad (you must first rub the old files).

Last note: after downloading, the name of the file will be indicated in the PDF title, but after the first opening, everything will fall into place.