Automatically renaming pdf files based on excel data

Question

I am creating pdf certificates using variable data from excel files with InDesign.  This creates a multipage pdf file with a different persons name on each page.  Then end result needs to be individual pdf files named for each person.  I can extract the single pages out of the main pdf ending up with however many files all named the same thing besides a number at the end of the common file name.  Question:  Is there a automated process of renaming the individual files using the data from the excel file?

Answer 1

You're looking for a PDF Parser or PDF miner tool (PDFminer) as a starting framework, and you'll almost certainly be writing custom code around that as parsing a text file that's effectively free-form and originating from multiple different sources almost always (always?) involves writing customized processing code and an on-going series of tweaks as the suppliers of the PDF change their ticket formats.  (Even apparently-simple details such as the time and date formats, for instance, can vary by geography and language and by supplier, and can derail common processing.)
In some cases that I can envision, it'd be entirely possible that the data you're after is actually located in an embedded image and not in text that can be parsed.
The best approach is to get folks to send you JSON or XML or some other format intended for interchange, and avoid the whole mess that is parsing or mining a printer-oriented format.
The other obvious option is to use something like Amazon's Mechanical Turk or some other explicitly outsourced help.  Depending on how often the formats change and how many of these PDF files you're dealing with and how varied the formats are, sometimes throwing staff at the problem can be the most cost-effective approach.