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Challenge: I'm distributing a PDF to a group of people, by e-mail. Now i would like to measure the amount of unique users which actually open the PDF file.

I can't store the PDF online, so that's not an option. But perhaps I can let the PDF communicate to an online hit counter which then tracks the unique users opening the PDF.

Is this possible?

user3625617
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    I don't think that is possible - I could be mistaken though. The best way to do it would be to store it online and send people a link to the page, which has analytics tracking, which opens the PDF. – ntzm May 11 '14 at 13:59
  • take a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9219807/using-javascript-inside-a-pdf – webpapaya May 11 '14 at 16:17

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Technically, it is possible, but it is highly questionable practice, and strongly frowned at. And besides, it works only if the user is using a JavaScript-enabled PDF viewer and has (Acrobat) JavaScript enabled.

In this case, it would be possible to run getURL() with an accordingly crafted URI in a Document-level JavaScript.

Max Wyss
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