Presto PDFs - Bulk Combining of PDF Files
There are many reasons why a paralegal or litigation support professional many need a way to combine multiple sets of 2, 3 or more PDFs automatically. Perhaps a user needs to add in an exhibit cover sheet to a set of 200 exhibits be filed with a Declaration. Maybe someone's database exports a series of emails and attachments as separate PDFs, and the attorney needs each parent/child set combined as a single PDF.
PDF Combine is a program that allows you to write a script specifying which PDFs should be combined together.
It can be downloaded from this site for $60. (A trial version is available). See:
After installing the program on your PC, you'll need to mock up the script. It follows this basic format:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\PDF Combine\PDFCombine.exe" "C:\MyDocuments\Exhibit 01 Cover Sheet.pdf" "C:\MyDocuments\ABC 000001826.pdf" "C:\MyDocuments\Exhibit 01_Combine.pdf" -kfs -c "Combine to PDF" -bookmark -npr 0,0 -bpdf
"C:\Program Files (x86)\PDF Combine\PDFCombine.exe" "C:\MyDocuments\02.pdf" "C:\MyDocuments\ABC 000007929.pdf" "C:\MyDocuments\Exhibit 02_Combine.pdf" -kfs -c "Combine to PDF" -bookmark -npr 0,0 -bpdf
"C:\Program Files (x86)\PDF Combine\PDFCombine.exe" "C:\MyDocuments\03.pdf" "C:\MyDocuments\ABC 000011505.pdf" "C:\MyDocuments\Exhibit 03_Combine.pdf" -kfs -c "Combine to PDF" -bookmark -npr 0,0 -bpdf
Start by entering the script in separate columns of an Excel spreadsheet , so you can easily plug in the files names of a cover sheet, the Bates number of the main document, and the name of the resulting combined PDF. See Presto PDFs Step 1 below.
Next, copy the columns from Excel into a text file in NotePad, and find & replace the resulting tab entries which appear where the column breaks were, with nothing. See Presto PDFs Step 2 below.
Next, analyze the script to see where the find & replace may have caused errors. Presto PDFs Step 3 indicates where a space should be added.
Finally, save and rename the text file with a 'bat' extension. This will create a batch file. Double-click on it and the script will run, and automatically create your combined PDFs.