Using macros (Macro Express) with Adobe

Question

When using Macro Express to find a string in Adobe pdf, how do I tell the macro that Adobe has found a particular string?

Answer 1

Steve, I have a PDF file that could have up to 300 pages.  Each page is a customer bill.  Each bill has an account number.  Some bills need to be extracted for special handling.  The remaining are printed and mailed.  I have a spreadsheet with the account numbers where the pages in the PDF needs to be extracted.  I have a macro that copies each account number from the spreadsheet, then does a "find" in the pdf for that account number (as you suggested).  The problem is that I don't know how to tell the macro that "hey, the correct page has been found now go to the next step of extracting" so I have to build in a delay in the macro to give it plenty of time to complete the search.  If I don't give it enough time, the macro will proceed and try to extract the wrong page.  Sometimes, the "find" is almost instant, but other times it takes 15 or 20 seconds to finish searching.  I had to build in enough time delay to cover the longest possible time, but that wastes time in many cases.  So, what I'd like to be able to tell the macro is "OK, this account number is now highlighted, so go to the next step in the macro" or "OK, the progress bar is gone, so go to the next step in the macro", but I don't know how to tell the macro this.  Or maybe there is something else I can tell the macro to key off of so that it would know that the current "find" is complete.
I hope this makes sense.  I just don't know Acrobat well enough to know how to know a "find" is complete other than by what I see visually.  Therefore, I don't know how to tell the macro what to look for so it knows when a "find" is complete.
Thanks for any help you can provide.