PDF automatic renaming

Support and Help
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1

Ubuntu Version:
24.04

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
GNOME

Problem Description:
I am looking for an app that can use OCR or similar to inspect the contents on a document and automatically rename it. More specifically, I have a bunch of receipts & invoices that I have scanned to a USB using an Epson scanner. Each receipt is contained in its own PDF file. Hopefully there is an application that can OCR the document and sanely rename it, which would make organization a lot easier.

Appreciate any suggestions!

2

The question here is: What do you mean by “sanely rename”?

Without a clear and precise definition, even a human would be unable to do the task that you’d like done.

If you can give a clear and precise definition, you can probably use OCR within a reasonably simple Bash script. But, it depends on how complex your request is — if it’s extremely complex, you could consider enlisting AI, which is improving by leaps and bounds.

3

Thanks @paddylandau the scanner currently saves each scanned document, giving it a name which consists of a long string of numbers followed by .PDF. I would like to find an application that can look at an invoice for example, and rename the document using the name of the vendor and the date. And, perhaps even identify the price, in the case of an invoice or receipt.

123456789.PDF to amazon_3-3-2026

This is a basic example, and it really doesn’t need to be any more complex than this.

Without automating this, I need to look at each scan document and rename it myself.

I have found a few GitHub projects that claim to do this. I may test a few of these in a virtual machine. Just wanted to check in case I am missing an obvious candidate here.

4

Let’s hope that one of the GitHub projects does what you need.

Otherwise, you might find it useful to use AI, although I don’t know how to connect AI to Ubuntu. I have a vague memory of someone asking how to do it, but I don’t remember more than that, sorry.

It could be done with a combination of Bash (or Perl or whatever) and OCR, but that would be a bit of a programming project.