Assemble onboarding materials into one accessible [package=PDF package], create fillable forms where needed, and verif…
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.
The 'Preserve Bookmarks' option is important because it keeps the names of your original files as bookmarks in the new combined PDF. This means you get a clickable list on the side of your PDF, making it very easy to navigate through the different sections. Without it, you might have to scroll a lot to find specific documents within your large combined file.
If your original files already had page numbers printed on them, combining them will likely cause the page numbers to restart with each new file. For example, if you combine two files, both starting at page 1, your new PDF will have two sets of 'page 1'. To fix this, you should add continuous page numbers to the combined PDF after it's created, overriding the old ones, to ensure a single, flowing sequence.
Combining PDFs rarely makes the file size smaller because it's mostly about putting existing data together, not compressing it. Each file brings its own information, and Acrobat just adds them up. If you need a smaller file, you should compress the PDF *after* you have combined all the documents. This will reduce the overall size of the new, single PDF.