PDF metadata 'Authors' is wrong since it uses the 'Content Creator' field in Sonoma

On macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, what I observe when exporting a PDF from Pages v13.2 where its Settings show an Author name of Anonymous, is a PDF with no Author metadata attribute set. It is Spotlight that is displaying Pages in the Author metadata field, both in the mdls command line utility, and on the Get Info panel.

MS Word 16.83 when saving a PDF, correctly populates the PDF Author metadata field with the contents of the Name field in its Preferences : User Information panel. I have no idea what the Elsevier application is or should be doing in the OP's offered image and that is a question for that vendor and their Windows product.

I have an AppleScript/Objective-C app here that will check if the Author metadata is missing and from a user prompt, add the Author key and provided string to the PDF attributes. However, in the wrong hands, this would allow anyone to update an unrestricted PDF with their credentials and for that reason, I won't be posting the code here.

Essentially, as etresoft has mentioned, it is a problem for Apple (who is not here) to fix, and may extend to other non-Apple applications that fail to add the Author metadata in generated PDFs.

VikingOSX wrote:

I have no idea what the Elsevier application is or should be doing in the OP's offered image and that is a question for that vendor and their Windows product.

According to those screenshots, the PDF data is correct. It is just Preview that is showing the information incorrectly. Automator is able to extract the correct values.

I have an AppleScript/Objective-C app here that will check if the Author metadata is missing and from a user prompt, add the Author key and provided string to the PDF attributes. However, in the wrong hands, this would allow anyone to update an unrestricted PDF with their credentials and for that reason, I won't be posting the code here.

There's nothing wrong with changing metadata on a PDF. If the PDF authors don't want it changed, they should have password-protected it. One of my first apps on the App Store was a tool to correct metadata and previews for PDFs and ePub files. Public-domain documents from archives are often incorrect. But eventually Apple added this capability to iBooks, so I pulled the app.

LucianoDiCroce wrote:

Any idea how to solve this?

Not possible. You just have to wait and hope Apple fixes it one day. And don't get your hopes up. Apple really isn't strong when it comes to information management issues like this. If you can still open your PDFs at all, consider yourself lucky.