Adobe Acrobat 8 Packages: Combine PDFs

06:41 | editor | Dec 29th, 2006 6:07pm |

Adobe Acrobat has had the ability to combine separate PDFs into one for some time now. In this episode you will see how not only to combine PDF pages from various documents into one PDF, but also how to package multiple PDFs into a new kind of Package document PDF using Acrobat 8.

Transcript:

Host: Terry White - Adobe Systems Incorporated

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast. My name is Terry White. In this episode we’re going to take a look at combining files together and for multiple files into a single professional looking PDF file.

So, I’m an Acrobat 8 professional, I’m going to getting starting screen; I’m just going to ahead and click Combine Files, once I’m there the Combine Files feature gives me an example or examples of what this will do or benefits of as to why I would want to do it. Let me explain a little bit about combine files in this version of Acrobat compared to previous versions. Previous versions of Acrobat could combine multiple PDFs or pages into a single PDF of multiple pages. This version of Acrobat allows you not only to do that, but it also allows you to make a binder of multiple PDF files into one. So, in other words, the individual PDF file stay intake, but they’re combined into one PDF file that you could send to your clients or customers or colleagues.

So, let me go ahead and say Combine Files and it gives me — it starts to walk me through the process now. The first me it wants me to do is add files, or I could even add folders of different documents that I wanted to combine. So, think of this feature as a way of combining a folder or series of documents that you want to send out, but you don’t want to send out the individual attachments. So, I’m going to grab the various kinds of files that I can include, so they don’t have to be PDF to start off with. In this case I’m grabbing an InDesign file, going to grab a PDF to go with it, here’s a PDF of a newsletter that 16 page., Here’s an EPS file, here’s a JPG, here’s another PDF, here’s another EPS. So, I’m adding those files in, I can move them up or down in their locations.

So, for example, if I want to move this file up in the stacking order or below in the stacking order, I’ve buttons that allow me to easily move it up or down. It also shows me the sizes of those files and more importantly I can choose a files size for the conversion. So, I want the smallest file size possible again, because I’m just emailing these up.

Now I’m going to go and click the Next button and what this will do is take me to the next area, where I choose between merging the files into a single PDF. So, all of the various PDFs will be one multi page PDF and they’ll be sequentially numbered, or I can assemble the files into, what’s new, is a PDF Package. Packaging the files wrap separate into one PDF Package. So, they stay separate or can be pulled out separately if need be. So, that’s the option I’m going to choose and then we’re just going to go ahead and tell it to also use the first document as the cover page or coversheet.

Now normally if you’re sending off a brochure package or package to a prospective client via the mail or Overnight delivery, you’d have a cover letter, you’d have a folder with all your brochures and proposals in it and then you’d send the entire package off as one document. So, think of doing that electronically with this Package feature. So, now I click Create, and what it’s doing now is it’s assembling the package, but remember some of those were native files, like the InDesign files, so it has to convert those into PDF on the fly while it’s doing that. Remember one of those was EPS files, so it’s having to run that through the spiller (ph), and so it’s doing all of the necessary work in the background to convert what wasn’t a PDF already into a PDF, or if it was a PDF downsizing it to the smallest file size, which is what I asked it to do.

So, now it’s done, I’m going to go ahead and click the save button in the lower right hand corner there, so I can save this package right onto the desktop and here it is. So, what’s different is I have one PDF file called Pacakge3.pdf, but this one PDF has multiple PDFs inside of it and so that’s what the new inside of Acrobat 8. So, for example, I’m on the coversheet, which is this particular page or PDF and if this PDF has multiple pages, which it does, I can see the cover has two pages. However, if I click on the next PDF in the stacking order, it shows me the bookmarks for that PDF, but I could see again if this PDF has 16 pages in it. So, I haven’t lost anything, I haven’t lost the ability to navigate the PDFs individually, but what I did pickup was the ability to send them all out as one.

Now, I know what a lot of you’re probably thinking at this point, “Well, what if I just want to separate out that one document,” let’s say, the schedule. Well, you can extract that one document out or simply drag it out of this package. So, you can drag it out to the desktop, and remember this was a PDF all and of itself as we started or if it wasn’t, it is now. So, anyone of these PDFs can be extracted out or taken out of the package and used as a single PDF.

So, that’s it for this episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast, taking a look at combining files, one of the five Cs of Acrobat 8 Professional, Combine, Collect, Control, Collaborate, and Create, yeah that’s it. I don’t know if I did them in order, but those are the five CS’s of Acrobat 8.

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Tags: Adobe, PDFs, Package, Acrobat 8

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