How to Automate Repetitive PDF Merging
Certain industries have repetitive tasks involving merging PDF files and that’s something we can make very easy.
Examples would be, combining legal or escrow documents, medical records, business documents and obviously stickers, labels, flyers or cards in the printing industry. Whatever it is, you can quickly create a template to automate the combination of these PDF files in any output size you need.
A Simple Example How to Automate PDF Merging
If you’ve ever bought a house you are aware of how many legal sized documents have to be signed at closing. Those PDF documents come from a variety of sources and need to be merged. They come from your real estate agent, the county, the city, the escrow company, the closing agent, the list goes on and on.
Every document is merged together to make a novel of sorts you need to sign at closing. This is done over and over again all day long by escrow companies and here is how it could be automated.
It is your job at the escrow company to combine all these files. You have five PDFs for each client and you have to combine them. You do this all day long, manually, over and over until you dream about combining PDF files. How would you automate this?
Creating Templates to Automate PDF Merging
To automate this task you’d want to create a template for the legal size pages that are 8.5”x14”. The system makes this very easy. Enter the paper dimensions (output of the page size you want) followed by the page size. The page size is what size you want the finished pages to be. If you want them their actual size you’d enter 8.5”x14”. If you wanted to scale them down for whatever reason enter the dimensions you’d want them scaled down to. For example lets say you need 2” of blank space for notes on each page. To create that space set your page size to 8.5”x12” and the system would condense the files to that size before placing them on the paper dimensions you set.
All the other settings you’d leave at 0.
So to recap you would create a template and the steps are:
- Name the template.
- Enter the paper dimensions (finished size of your PDF papers).
- Enter the page dimensions (size you want your images to be on those papers).
You can now upload your five files into that template and merge them with a click of a button. You can do this over and over quickly by either uploading the files right into the browser with our web FTP option or you can upload by connecting with a traditional FTP program.
Collaborate With Your Team
You can share with users so that they can upload PDF files and eliminate the need for emailing you. Within your account you have the ability to share templates with other users and they’ll be able to see your templates and files you’ve uploaded. This feature makes collaborating to get PDFs merged extremely easy. No more back and forth, everyone upload your documents to a central location where everyone can see them.
If you have questions about automating any type of PDF merging, combining or imposing reach out to us. We’re always happy to help and even get a template set up for your project.