The Adobe Acrobat Professional XI offers a powerful way for automating repetitive tasks on the number of documents at once. This functionality is called “Action Wizard”. It is also known as “Batch Processing” in previous versions of Adobe Acrobat. You can define a series of commands with specific settings and in a specific order that you apply in a single step. You can apply an action to a single document, to several documents, or to an entire collection of documents. Once you have created an action, you can execute it from a command-line batch file using AutoBatch plug-in.

The instructions below explain how to start using "Action Wizard" and define your own PDF processing "action". This example shows how to split multiple PDF files using "Split Document" batch command provided by AutoSplit Pro plug-in.

Step 1 - Start Action Wizard

Select "File > Action Wizard" from the menu to access and manage the actions. Alternatively, open "Action Wizard" toolbar by expanding "Tools" panel located on the right-hand side of the Acrobat window. If you do not see "Action Wizard" in the list of the available toolbars, click on a small icon in the upper-right corner of the "Tools" panel and select "Action Wizard" from a pull down list.

Step 2 - Choose Tool/Command to Add

The "Create New Action" dialog appears on the screen. Now, add one or more batch commands to the action and configure what documents to use as the input. Click on command category to see a list of available commands.

Step 3 - Add "Split Document" Command

Click on command ("Split Document" in this example) and then press + button to add this command to the action steps:

Step 4

Now the selected command will be added to the list of processing steps. Uncheck "Prompt User" option (otherwise this command would always display a settings dialog when executed) and press "Specify Settings" button:

Step 5 - Configure the Tool/Command

Configure all settings as required and press OK button. These settings will be used when command is executed. If split settings have been previously stored in the APR settings file, then load spliting profile from the file.

Step 6 - Do Not Add "Save" Command

The "Split Document" command takes an input document and splits it into multple output PDF files. Unlike many of the standard batch commands, this operation does not modify the input document and therefore does not need "Save" command. It is important not to add "Save" command unless it is necessary for other reasons.

Step 9 - Select Input Files/Folders To Process

Now select input files/folders to run this action on. Press either file or folder icon in the "Files to be Processed" section and select an input files/folder. Repeat this procedure multiple times to add more than one file/folder.

Step 10 - Save Action

Now we have completed configuring the command. We have specified input files/folders, commands to use and where and how to save the results. Press "Save" button to save these settings as a named "action":

Step 11 - Add Name and Description

Type desired "Action Name" and description into "Save Actions" dialog. Press "Save" button to save the action.

Step 12 - Selecting Action For Execution

Now you should see this new action added to both the "Action Wizard" toolbar and to "File > Action Wizard" menu. Click on the action in the "Actions" list to execute it. If you have selected a folder as input and there are a lot of files in it, then it takes quite some time for Adobe Acrobat to display a "Start" button for launching the action (see next step).

Step 13 - Starting the Action

Press "Start" button to execute the action.