Tip #3036 - Combining Adobe PDFs
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Combining
Adobe PDFs
In business and personal
computing, we are always trying to figure out shortcuts to make our work
easier and more efficient. For example, instead of subjecting yourself
to the horrors of retyping something in a word processor, we simply cut
and paste the information we want from a document and edit it in our new
document. Another way to improve efficiency and make your job a whole
lot easier is to learn how to combine single Adobe PDFs into one document.
This will clear up needed hard drive space and it brings similar documents
together into one unifying body. You’ll find that this tip will
make it easier to bring reports, charts and other documents common to
the PDF process together. Want to learn more? Then keep reading!
The first step in
combining PDFs is to find the particular files you want to combine. They
are usually in the My Documents folder or on your desktop. For the purposes
of this tip, it is best to left click on the individual files and drag
them from their regular folder to your desktop (the first screen you see
on your computer). This makes it a whole lot easier to bring your PDF
documents together as one.
Once your PDFs are
on your desktop, left click somewhere near the documents you want to combine,
without actually clicking on their icons. This will allow you to drag
your select option over several items at once. Once you have selected
the files you want to include in your combined PDF, place your mouse arrow
over the selected area and right click. A menu will come up next to your
arrow and one of the options will be “Combine in Adobe Acrobat.”
Select this option by left clicking on it and wait for Adobe Acrobat to
load on the next screen.
The next screen will
offer the opportunity to arrange your individual PDFs in the order in
which they should appear in the combined document. Left click on a document
and drag it up or down the list in order to change the order of your documents.
The top document will appear first, the second document second and so
forth. Once you have clicked and dragged the documents into their correct
order, click on the OK button in the lower right hand
corner.
Wait patiently for
the document to combine in Adobe Acrobat and the next step will be to
save the document in its combined form. Use an easy to remember name for
your newly combined PDF. Perhaps, a clever combination of the individual
file names or a file name that fits in with your folder organization scheme.
After naming the document, investigate your beautiful new PDF.
One tip I would offer
at this point is to reduce the file size of the PDF, as there may be some
residual extra data that may be hanging around from the transfer. Go to
your toolbar and select File and under that, choose Reduce
File Size. The file reduction has no influence on the clarity
of your document, nor does it delete anything from the text. It merely
eliminates excess bytes and saves you some hard drive space in the long
run. If you don’t believe me, check your document again. It should
still have all of its parts and if for some reason it did corrupt your
combined file, you still have the individual files to create a new PDF.
From there, you will
be able to access this combined document any time and you can feel free
to delete the individual PDFs by right clicking on the individual files
and selecting Delete from the available menu.
There you have it!
A handy tip to making your documents more space friendly and easier to
access!
~ Nick Katers
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