Programmatically Rotate PDF Files

The Problem: A friend’s work photocopier continually scans files in with the wrong page orientation which is obviously both annoying and time consuming going through each PDF file changing the page orientation. After spending a few hours searching on Google I was unable to find a quick fix to this problem so my next stop was the adobe forums. A quick search their revealed a only one topic with someone posting about the exact same problem but other than a totally unhelpful reply from an Adobe employee saying look in the Acrobat API there was no solution.

Thinking it would be easy to find the Acrobat API documentation I begin searching the site, another hour went by and I could not find the documentation anywhere until I found another user’s post linking to it (API attached at the bottom of this post). From here I managed to write the below application to rotate PDF files. Unfortunately you have to have Acrobat professional installed, which can be downloaded on a trial basis if this is a one of project for you. First add the following imports at the top of your page

Imports System.IO
Imports AcroPDFLib
Imports AdobePDFMakerX
Imports Acrobat
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Here is the code for your button

 'make sure they selected a folder
        If FolderBrowserDialog1.ShowDialog() = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then

            'get the path to the directory
            Dim dir As DirectoryInfo = New DirectoryInfo(FolderBrowserDialog1.SelectedPath)

            'crete an array of file information for all the pdf files in
            'this directory
            Dim fileInfo(dir.GetFiles("*.pdf").Length - 1) As FileInfo
            'get the files
            fileInfo = dir.GetFiles("*.pdf")

            'loop through each file
            For i As Integer = 0 To fileInfo.GetUpperBound(0)
                Dim pdf As AcroPDDoc
                Try
                    'create a new pdf object for each file
                    pdf = New AcroPDDoc
                Catch ex As COMException
                    MessageBox.Show("You need to install Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 or later!", "Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)

                    Exit Sub
                End Try

                'try open the file
                If Not pdf.Open(fileInfo(i).FullName.ToString) Then

                    MessageBox.Show("Could not open file" & vbNewLine & fileInfo(i).FullName.ToString, _
                                    "Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
                    Exit Sub
                End If

                'loop through each page in the pdf file and and rotate it

                For j As Integer = 0 To pdf.GetNumPages - 1
                    'declare page
                    Dim page As AcroPDPage
                    'get next page
                    page = pdf.AcquirePage(j)

                    'rotate the page
                    If page.SetRotate(90) Then

                    Else
                        'if we could not rotate the page
                        MessageBox.Show("Could not rotate page", "Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, _
                                        MessageBoxIcon.Error)
                        Exit Sub
                    End If

                    'save the edited pdf file back to the same location
                    pdf.Save(1, fileInfo(i).FullName.ToString)

                Next
                'add the file to the list box when completed
                lstFiles.Items.Add(fileInfo(i))
            Next
            lblResult.Text = "Completed"
            MessageBox.Show("All files completed", "Success", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)

        End If

Simply add the above code to a button and then all you have to do is add these references. To add a reference go to Project > Show All Files then in the right hand pane right click the references folder and add these references from under COM

• AcroPDFLib
• AdobePDFMakerX
• Acrobat

That's it you should be done, run the application and select the folder containing your pdf files. If you look in the code I have set the rotate to 90 this puts the current top page edge to 90 degrees. If anyone else has tackled this problem I would like to hear of your solutions especially if they avoid having to use Acrobat Professional. Files: API Documentation PS: The reason I did not subit the full solution was due to Adobe having restrictions on been able to distribute their .DLL files. If you email me I will help you set the application up.