8.5

l Modifying Metadata does not immediately modify the data. This is one of the benefits of Metadata
because you can sort it, filter it, sequence it, add data to it, without ever modifying the data file itself.
This is important because if you, for instance, filter out certain data pages from the metadata and then
save your data file with the Send to Folder task, the full data file is saved, not the filtered one. This is
resolved through different methods, used in the different examples below.
l Modifying data does not immediately modify the Metadata. So, if you have a PDFfile with
metadata and you use a PDFsplitter, the metadata information would still reflect the original data, not
the split. This can generally be resolved by using the Create Metadata plugin again.
l Branches, Loops and Conditions do not reset the metadata. This is important in some cases
because the metadata does affect your output (see next point)and can cause confusion if not handled
properly. For example, if you were to split a data file and, under a specific condition, create metadata
on the file and generate a PDF, other wise print the file, you would run into this issue. When the
metadata is created in the condition, it stays "active"even on the next split. If that split actually prints,
it's using the metadata from the previous split, and will attempt to print the number of pages specified in
the metadata. So, it may print 3 pages instead of 40, or 25 pages, the last 5 of which would be blank.
The only way to get around this is to either regenerate your metadata when possible, or to use the
"Metadata File Management" on page456 to delete the active metadata file. When doing this,
metadata is ignored so the data file itself properly determines the number of pages to print.
l As a general rule, only input tasks and Metadata related tasks modify Metadata. There are, however, a
few notable exceptions:
l "Create PDF" on page260 has the option to reset your metadata according to the new PDFfile.
In reality, Create PDF is one of the most useful tasks in PDF workflows, since it is the easiest
way to make your PDFfile conform to the metadata without using a PlanetPress Design
document. See the "Create PDF" on page260 page for more information.
l "Run Script" on page364 tasks can also modify metadata using the Metadata API(See "Using
Scripts" on page81).
l The "Barcode Scan" on page251 task can add information to the existing metadata, and creates
it if there is none.
l The "Capture Fields Generator" on page422, "Capture Fields Processor" on page426, "Get
Capture Document" on page441 and "Find Capture Documents" on page436 tasks generate
their own metadata.
l The "Lookup in Microsoft® Excel® Documents" on page391 enhances metadata fields with
information from an Excel spreadsheet, but does not otherwise change its structure.
Examples
l "Daily Sales Report from PDF Files" on the next page