Interleaving Pages From Multiple PDF Documents During a Document Merge

AutoSplit plug-in Adobe® Acrobat®

Introduction

This tutorial shows you how to interleave pages from multiple documents when merging them together with the AutoSplit™ plug-in. When merging documents into a single file, the plug-in offers two merge operation types: “Append Pages” and “Interleave Pages”. The steps below demonstrate ways to combine two input documents using the “Interleave Pages” option. The goal is to have the pages interleaved to achieve a unique format that features the single use of some pages, with others being repeated. The configuration can then be saved to process similar files in the same way in the future.

Note that any number of documents can be merged together using these methods, but we will demonstrate using only two.

Input Document Description

The two input documents used to demonstrate this first method each contain four pages, marked A/B/C/D and 1/2/3/4. The goal is to use the plug-in to merge these two documents together, ensuring that they are interleaved following a specific pattern. The 1234.pdf file is treated as single "first page" pages. Each one is to be followed by all pages of the ABCD.pdf file. The single output file will follow a 1-A-B-C-D-2-A-B-C-D-3-A-B-C-D-4-A-B-C-D format.

We will then explore how the processing parameters can be changed in order to generate various output files.

Prerequisites

You need a copy of Adobe® Acrobat® along with the AutoSplit™ plug-in installed on your computer in order to use this tutorial. Both are available as trial versions.

Step-by-Step Tutorial

Step 1 - Open the "Merge Documents Settings" Dialog

In Adobe Acrobat, select "Plug-Ins > Merge Documents > Merge Documents into Single Documents..." from the main menu to open the "Merge Documents Settings" dialog.
[⚡ How to locate Plugins menu ⚡].

Step 2 - Change the "Merge Operation" Type

Select the "Interleave Pages" merge operation type, then check the "Duplicate pages if number of pages is less than number of pages to interleave" option.

Step 3 - Select Documents to be Merged

Press the "Add Document(s)..." button to select the first document to be used for the merge operation.

Use the dialog that opens to locate the desired document - select it and press "Open". We will first add the "1234.pdf" document containing the "first" pages.

Step 4 - Confirm First Input Document Settings

The "Input Document Settings..." dialog will now appear - use it to modify file processing settings. Ensure that the number of pages to be interleaved is set to "1".

Press "OK" to confirm the settings.

Step 5 - Add Another Document

Documents added to the merge operation will be listed in the white box. Double click on them at any time to re-open the "Input Document Settings..." dialog.

Press the "Add Document(s)..." button again to select the next document.

Locate it and press "Open" - we will now add the "ABCD.pdf" document containing pages to be interleaved between the 1/2/3/4 "first" pages.

Step 6 - Confirm Second Input Document Settings

Ensure that the number of pages to be interleaved is set to "4". This means all four pages will be interleaved between each page of the "1234.pdf" document.

Press "OK" to confirm the settings.

Step 7 - Merge the Documents

Press "OK" to proceed to merge the documents together.

A report box will display the success of the operation. Press "OK" to close it.

Step 8 - Check the Results

The merged documents will be opened in Acrobat. Check that all pages have been interleaved in the desired order:

With the "Duplicate pages..." option OFF, using the same interleaving options (1,4) produces this output (1-A-B-C-D-2-3-4):

If the number of pages to be interleaved is set to "1" for both input documents (see steps 4 & 6 above), the output would follow a 1-A-2-B-3-C-4-D format. Checking the "Duplicate pages..." option makes no difference to this output:

Step 9 - Using Documents of Different Lengths

The steps above show the results of working with documents of the same length - now we will use one single-page input document to carry out interleaving operations.

To demonstrate this, we will merge two files: "1234.pdf" (4 pages) and "A.pdf" (1 page).

Both documents have the number of pages to be interleaved set to "1":

With the "Duplicate pages..." option ON, page A is duplicated and interleaved amongst every page of the 1234 document (1-A-2-A-3-A-4-A):

With the "Duplicate pages..." option OFF, page A is interleaved once (1-A-2-3-4):

The results are affected if the number of pages in the document is less than the number of pages to be interleaved. Note that documents can be of any length, but we are using a single page document to demonstrate this.

Now we'll set the "A.pdf" document's number of pages to interleave to "2". With the "Duplicate pages..." option ON, page A will be interleaved TWICE amongst every page of the 1234 document (1-A-A-2-A-A-3-A-A-4-A-A). It is duplicated as the number of pages in the document is less than the number of pages to interleave:

With the "Duplicate pages..." option OFF, page A will be interleaved ONCE after page 1 (1-A-2-3-4):

If both input documents have the number of pages to interleave set to "2", a 1-2-A-A-3-4-A-A format is generated when the "Duplicate pages..." option is ON. This is because two pages from "1234.pdf" are interleaved at a time, and page A is duplicated and inserted between them:

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