Combine all subcontractor bid PDFs into one consolidated PDF with a simple index page and send to the decision board (…
Open Adobe Acrobat.
Go to File > Combine Files.
Click Add Files and select the PDF files you want to merge.
Arrange the files in your desired order by dragging and dropping them within the list.
Click Combine to merge the selected files into a single PDF document.
Save the new combined PDF to your preferred location.
You can preview and reorder files before combining to ensure the final PDF is in the correct sequence.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
Bookmarks are like a table of contents for your PDF. When you combine files, if you keep 'Preserve Bookmarks' on, Acrobat makes each original file a main bookmark. This is important because it makes your new, larger PDF easy to navigate. You can quickly click a bookmark to jump to the start of each original document, instead of scrolling through everything.
No, if your original files already had page numbers, they will restart for each file in the combined PDF. For example, if you combine two files, both starting at page 1, your combined PDF will have two page 1s. To fix this, you will need to add new, continuous page numbers to the combined PDF after you merge the files.
Combining files rarely makes the PDF smaller; it usually keeps the same size or makes it larger because you're adding more content. The process focuses on putting documents together, not reducing their size. If your combined PDF is too big, you should compress it AFTER you have finished combining all the files. Acrobat has a 'Compress PDF' tool for this purpose.