Organize PDF Files Inside iTunes

iTunes’ little secret is that it knows PDFs. You can apply of all of the great tagging, searching and sorting features that make iTunes the best music organizing program to keeping your PDFs in order. Apple offers digital booklets and liner notes in PDF format with the purchase of some albums from the iTunes store, so it has to understand how to manage them.

In fact, Radiologists at Renji Hospital and Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in Shanghai are using iTunes to sort, save and organize their PDF files.

Why use iTunes for PDFs?
There are four main reasons to choose iTunes as a PDF mangement program. First, it supports tagging so that a single PDF can be filed under several folders. Second, it’s cross-platform between Windows and Mac. Third, it has a simple backup utility. And best of all, it’s free!

What iTunes won’t do.
iTunes cannot display the PDFs directly. Another program like Adobe reader, Foxit Reader or Apple preview will have to do that. It also cannot search the contents of a PDF file, although Apple’s Spotlight can search the contents of PDF files stored in the iTunes Library for Mac OS X.

Create a Library just for PDFs
If you do not want to store important PDF files alongside your favorite party mix, you can create a new iTunes Library folder by holding the shift key (option key for Mac OS X) down while starting iTunes. Next, drag your PDF files onto iTunes just as you would your favorite music. Next, modify the file tags by right-clicking on the PDF file in iTunes and select Get Info.

Think outside the box with tags
Start thinking creatively with tags. They are just database fields used for searching. For example, the Artist field can be where you got the PDF from like Microsoft, Cisco or Apple. Genre can mean type of PDF like ebook or technical article.

It’s all about the playlists
Imagine playlists as virtual folders. Now that you have tagged all of your PDF files, you select New Smart Playlist from under the file menu to create lists based on your tagging. Click the little + icon to add multiple search fields. PDFs can belong to multiple playlists at the same time. For example, a playlist for ebooks will contain ebooks from Cisco and Microsoft but does not remove them from the Cisco or Microsoft playlist. Playlists can even be grouped into folders.

Get rid of all that paper
You can organize receipts and old documents by creating your own PDFs with a scanner and printing to PDF. Mac OS X can print to PDFs without any additional software. Windows computers can print to PDF with free software like CutePDF or PDFCreator.

Shortcuts for Mac Users
Doug Adams maintains a website with more than 400 AppleScripts to automate tasks in iTunes, but AppleScripts only work on MacOS X. He has created three AppleScripts to speed up the process of adding PDFs to iTunes.

Don’t forget to backup your library
Select Backup to Disc under the file menu. In the next screen, you can choose to either backup your entire library or just the stuff that you have added since the last backup. The backups that iTunes creates are not compressed or encrypted and can be opened on any computer.