Before sending to the steering committee, combine the week's slides, Excel charts, and the PM update into one PDF; put…
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.
Keeping 'Preserve Bookmarks' turned on is very helpful. When you combine files, this option makes each original file a top-level bookmark in the new PDF. This creates an easy-to-use table of contents, allowing anyone who views the combined document to quickly jump between the different sections from the original files. Without bookmarks, navigating a long combined PDF would be much harder, requiring manual scrolling to find specific sections.
In Adobe Acrobat, 'combining files' and 'merging files' refer to the same process. Both terms describe taking multiple separate documents, which can be different file types like Word, Excel, or other PDFs, and putting them together into one single PDF document. The 'Combine Files' tool is what you use for this task.
If your original documents already had page numbers, combining them will likely result in page numbers that restart with each new file. To fix this, you will need to add new, continuous page numbers to the combined PDF after you have merged all the files. Acrobat has a tool to add headers and footers, which includes options for continuous page numbering across the entire document. This will override the old, restarting page numbers.
Yes, you can automate combining files using the Adobe PDF Services API. This allows developers to integrate the combine PDF function into their own applications or workflows. The API supports combining up to 20 files at once and even lets you specify which pages from each file you want to include, offering flexible automation for your document tasks.