A powerful new feature in version 12 of Debenu PDF Aerialist is the ability to use regular expressions with the Create Keyword Links feature to automatically create web links based on matching keyword patterns.
So for example, imagine that you are a machine parts manufacturer and you have a catalog (in PDF format of course) with diagrams that display all of the individual parts and part numbers in a machine. Imagine that you also have a website where each of this individual parts are listed for sale. It could be desirable to create web links in this PDF to the relevant web page for each part number. Perhaps the part numbers look like this:
AB-15843
AC-15842
AD-15849
Previously you would have to manually create a link for each of these part numbers, but using regular expressions we can find any set of characters that match a particular pattern (i.e. two alphabetical characters followed by a dash followed by 5 numerical characters) and generate a link for them! The matching keywords are appended to the end of the base URL that you specify, so the resulting web links would look like this:
http://www.example.com/buy/part/AB-15843
http://www.example.com/buy/part/AC-15842
http://www.example.com/buy/part/AD-15849
As you can see, this feature has the potential to save you a lot of time. Here’s how to do it yourself:
Step 1
- Open the PDF that you want to add links to and open the Links > Create Keyword Links feature in Debenu PDF Aerialist.
- Copy and paste this regular expression [A-Z][A-Z]-\s?[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] or this shorter version [A-Z]{2}-\s?[0-9]{5} into the Find field.
- Select the Regular expression option.
Step 2
- For the Action type option select Open a Web Link.
- Add this URL to the URL field: http://www.example.com/buy/part/
- Select the Append found keyword to above URL link option
- Click OK
Step 4
- Change any Link Properties settings that you wish to, leaving as default is fine too.
- Click on the Create All button.
- In this case 12 keyword links were created.
