PDF Property Extension

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PDF Property Extension is a lightweight COM extension that brings back PDF properties and columns (like Title, Author, Subject, Comments) to Windows Explorer (File Explorer). It implements the IPropertyHandler interface for PDF files, required from Windows Vista® and later.

Works on Windows Vista®, 7, 8 and 10 (both x86 and x64).

How it works

Just install it and... nothing else.
Nothing to configure, when installation completes your Windows Explorer (File Explorer) will populate the additional columns (you need to show them by right clicking on the list header):

And the "File properties | Details" will show the new properties too:

Technical details

Starting from Windows Vista®, file properties subsystem was deeply changed and the old IColumnHandler support has been removed.
The new IPropertyHandler interface must be implemented to let custom file properties (like Title, Author, Comments) appear in Windows Explorer (File Explorer).

None of the free PDF viewers I know, including the official Adobe Reader®, implement the new interface.
Some of them implement the IFilter interface that makes properties available only to Windows Search.
A trick/workaround to show PDF properties is to write somethinf in the "search" box in the upper-right corner of Windows Explorer, like *.pdf, but it's an uncomfortable solution for me.

But starting a file search just to show PDF titles was too much for me, that's why I wrote PDF Property Extension.

Licensing

PDF Property Extension is free to use.
Donations are welcome, especially if you use it in a professional or business context.

Feedback & bug reporting

To report any issue you had with PDFPropertyExtension please use the dedicated forum here.

 
Version history 

v.1.16.2 - 2023-02-03

  • Fixed hang when decoding malformed PDF compressed objects.

v.1.16.1 - 2022-11-18

  • Disallow installation on ARM platforms (still unsupported).

v.1.16.0 - 2021-03-09

  • Improved parsing of objects with multiple dictionaries.

v.1.15.0 - 2020-08-12

  • Added support for multiple dictionaries within the same PDF object.

v.1.14.0 - 2020-03-24

  • Added support for BOM-encoded Unicode strings in encrypted metadata.

v.1.13.1 - 2019-10-14

  • Fixed silent installer (/S switch) not working if another PDF handler is already installed on the system.

v.1.13.0 - 2019-01-11

  • Fixed setup procedure not allowing installation on Windows Vista.

v.1.12.0 - 2018-05-02

  • Fixed error in stream xref object content parsing leading to wrong line content length.
  • Upgraded setup script to NSIS 3.x (better compatibility with Windows 10).

v.1.11.0 - 2018-02-20

  • Added support for "System.Document.DateCreated" and "System.Document.DateSaved" Windows properties.
    NOTE: these date values are stored into PDF document so they could differ from filesystem "File created" and "File last modified" properties (file properties could change when copying/downloading/editing the PDF file itself).

v.1.10.0 - 2017-06-15

  • Added support for protected documents.
    NOTE: PDF document must be readable without any password required (empty user password).

v.1.9.0 - 2017-06-01

  • Added support for document page count.

v.1.8.3 - 2017-05-05

  • Fixed parsing of UTF8 encoded XMP objects.
  • Fixed parsing PDF documents with updated Xref tables.

v.1.8.2 - 2017-01-19

  • Fixed long hang and high CPU usage when parsing malformed/truncated files.

v.1.8.1 - 2016-10-21

  • Fixed infinite parsing loop for PDFs containing multiple plain Xref tables.

v.1.8.0 - 2016-10-17

  • Added support for encrypted files with unencrypted metadata.

v.1.7.0 - 2016-06-16

  • Added support for XMP metadata.
  • Added support for Xref table revisions.
  • Faster reading of PDF Xref tables.

v.1.6.0 - 2016-06-06

  • PDF parser now supports Xref tables with object references.

v.1.5.3 - 2016-05-16

  • Fixed internal inflate buffer sizing issues, leading to uncompressing failures for some PDF streams (and no metadata shown for these files).

v.1.5.2 - 2016-05-02

  • Added support to Company, Category and Keywords (Tags) properties.
  • Added command line version of the parser: PdfPropertyExtension.exe.
    It's stored in a system folder, so could be called from everywhere and used to automate metadata extraction.
  • Fixed memory access exceptions on some PDF files, leading to Explorer crash.
  • Optimized parser to fix possible memory address overflows.
  • Fixed parsing of (malformed) PDF files with offset pointing to the \r\n before "xref" tag.

v.1.5.1 - 2015-09-05

  •  Fixed parsing of PDF metadata containing escaped chars.

v.1.5.0 - 2015-06-24

  • Added support to PDF 1.6 XREF compressed table objects.
  • Fixed crashes caused by compressed stream content.

v.1.4.1 - 2015-04-29

  • Setup hangs on some systems.

v.1.4.0 - 2015-04-20

  • Added support for PDF keywords.
  • Fixed parsing of PDF files with HEX encoded values splitted over multiple lines.

v.1.3.1 - 2015-04-18

  • Fixed crash of Windows Explorer when parsing some PDF.

v.1.3.0 - 2015-02-12

  • New and faster PDF parser.
  • Added support to PDF-1.5 files, with encoded object-type XREF tables.

v.1.2.0 - 2015-01-09

  • Added support for "Subject" property.

v.1.1.0 - 2014-12-11

  • Optimized speed and memory of PDF parsing.
  • Fixed issues with PDF titles containing slashes "/".
  • Fixed crash with encrypted PDFs.
  • Windows Explorer now won't show misleading edit boxes for PDF missing properties anymore.

v.1.0.0 - 2014-11-03

  • First public release

 

Download

WARNING: Windows Vista® (or newer) is needed to run this software.

Mirroring, repackaging and any other way to redistribute my software to end users from outside coolsoft.altervista.org is FORBIDDEN! (unless expressly authorized).
Links to this page are welcome (do not use HTML #fragments and do not link the .exe file directly).

PdfPropertyExtension_1.16.2.exe
Description Current version
Release date 2023-Feb-03 Size 512,664 bytes
MD5 adb268cfb4e1c42ff3c1f402995f975e
SHA1 f6c92bec0d042a214a6eaf88e006b03c31717ce7
SHA256 7a92c7eefa2a64de84f3070a1e50ff1494177b9338a1ad3561a888621f05468e
TIMESTAMP 1675445783
Open virus check report

Comments

PDF Property Extension now has its own forum, old comments were moved there.