Creating and Printing Multiple Forms Per Sheet

AutoMailMerge plug-in for Adobe® Acrobat®

Introduction

It is often necessary to create and print mailing labels (or similar kind of documents) multiple items per sheet. This can be easily accomplished with the AutoMailMerge™ plug-in for the Adobe® Acrobat®. The following tutorial provides instructions on creating multiple PDF documents by populating a PDF form template with data from a spreadsheet and then printing multiple documents per a single sheet of paper.

Data Description

We are going to use a business card template with fillable form fields and a CSV data file. You can download the sample PDF form and the corresponding CSV data file used in the tutorial.

What is Mail Merge?

"Mail merge" is a computer term describing the production of multiple documents from a single template form and a data file. This technique is used to create personalized letters, documents, bills and pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for mass mailings (or document creation) from a database of names and addresses. Using mail merge, all you have to do is create a single PDF form that contains information that is the same for each document. Next, add fillable form fields for the information that is unique for each copy of the document. The AutoMailMerge™ plug-in uses a PDF form as a template and takes input from a variety of data sources to populate form fields and generate output PDF documents.

Prerequisites

You need a copy of the Adobe® Acrobat® along with the AutoMailMerge™ plug-in installed on your computer in order to use this tutorial. You can download trial versions of both the Adobe® Acrobat® and the AutoMailMerge™.

Step-by-Step Tutorial

Step 1 - Create a PDF Form

Create a PDF document that contains only one label on the page. Use any text editor (for example, the Microsoft Word) to design a document and then save it as PDF file. Alternatively, print a desiged document into a PDF format by using the "Adobe PDF" printer. Make sure a page size in the template document is set to the dimension of the single label or card (for example, 4" by 2").

Step 2 - Add Interactive Form Fields

Open a PDF template in the Adobe® Acrobat® and use "Prepare Form" tool to add interactive text fields. See the following tutorial for step-by-step instructions on how to create PDF form fields in the Adobe® Acrobat®. The sample form used in this example has 3 text fields: "Name", "Address" and "Phone". Save changes to the PDF file once done editing the form.

IMPORTANT: If you want to place more than one text line in a PDF text field, then you have to set a "Multi-line" property for this particular form field when designing the form.

Step 3 - Open a Mail Merge Wizard

Open a PDF form template that was created in step 1.

Select Plugins > Mail Merge… to open the Mail Merge dialog.

If you are using a new Adobe Acrobat interface, then you can locate Mail Merge menu here:

Please see the following page for a short video tutorial on how to locate Plugins menu in the new Adobe® Acrobat® interface.

If you are using a "classic" Adobe Acrobat interface (pre-2022), then you can locate Mail Merge menu here:

Press the "Edit Settings..." button to start a mail merge wizard.

Step 4 - Map Form to Data Fields

Click the "Browse..." button in the "Data Source" dialog.

Select an input data file. In this example, we are using a plain text CSV file. CSV file format is a widely used for data exchange of the spreadsheet-like data. It can be opened and edited by most spreadsheet applications including Microsoft Excel. They are simple to use and do not require any additional software. Select "Comma separated text file (*.csv)" from the list of available data source types:

Assign fields from a data source to PDF form fields by double-clicking on a form field name and selecting a corresponding data field from a list:

Sometimes, it is necessary to fill a single PDF form field with data from multiple data fields. In the business card example, the "Address" field needs to contain a full address including city, state and zip information. Check the "Use a multiple-field expression to create a composite field" option. Use a multiple-field expression to fill it. Type the names of the data fields surrounded in "[..]" brackets into the "Enter expression" box:

Click "Next >" in the "Data Source" dialog to proceed.

Step 5 - Specify Field and Output Options

The "Specify Field Options" screen would appear. Check the "Flatten output PDF documents" option to make output to appear as a regular PDF document, not as a fillable PDF form. Click "Next >" to advance to the next screen.

The "Output Files" screen would appear. Click "Browse..." to specify an output folder.

Configure the plug-in to output a single "compound" document that will contain all business cards. Uncheck the "Save each copy of the filled form as a separate PDF document" option and check the "Output a compound document that will contain all filled forms" option. Enter a desired name for the output compound PDF file. Click "Next >" to advance to the next screen.

Press the "Next >" button multiple times on the following screens. Click "Finish" on the last "Advanced" screen to finish configuring the mail merge parameters.

Step 6 - Start Mail Merge

Check the settings summary. Optionally, save the mail merge settings into the *.mms file for a later reuse by pressing the "Save Settings..." button. Use the "Load Settings..." button to load them back later. Click "OK" to advance to the mail merge process.

Press the "Run Mail Merge" button in the "Confirm Processing" dialog to start a mail merge process.

The "Mail Merge Results" dialog will appear once a mail merge is completed. Click "OK" to close this dialog and open an output folder.

Step 7 - Print Multiple Forms per Sheet

Once the processing is complete, the compound document will be automatically opened for viewing. Select "View > Page Display > Two Page Scrolling" from the menu to display multiple cards simultaneously.

This is just for the better document viewing. It has no effect on the way the document is going to be printed. Download a sample output PDF document for the sample CSV data file used in this tutorials.

Select "File > Print..." from the main menu of the Adobe® Acrobat®.

The "Print" dialog would appear. Click the "Multiple" button. Set the "Pages per sheet:" to "Custom..." and specify a desired number of pages per sheet ("2 by 4" for this example). Click "Print" to start printing.

The advantage of this method is that it can print any desired number of labels per sheet on any paper size. Here is an example of the output with multiple business cards per sheet:

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