Stapling multiple files in 1 pdf file while printing with the creator

PDFCreator
1

Hello, we run a database which produce many single file reports at once. I was wondering if i can use creator or creator pro for stapling all these reports in one pdf file, not after printing using adobe but during the printing.

thanks

2

Hi,

yes you can print any numkber of documents to the PDFCreator printer and combine them all into a single PDF during the conversion process: http://docs.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/latest/en/pdfcreator/using-pdfcreator/merge-two-documents/

Best regards,

Robin

3

So far i cant see any merge, while im printing with creator, the pdf architect opens with multiple files and then im confused.

4

Hi,

you need to have auto-save disabled. Then simply print several print jobs without pressing the “save” button and use the “merge” button when you have gathered all documents you’d like to merge.

Best regards,

Robin

5

Hello, do you have any suggestions for getting the files to stay in the original sequence during merging?

The label software I use outputs multiple unique pages as individual jobs in the print spool. I know it outputs them in the correct order, because they come out that way on a physical printer. The problem is, they end up in random order in the PDF.

I had one last week with 300 plus labels where it glitched and made a couple duplicate pages. The warehouse had no choice but to pick through them to find the dupes. Even if it had kept the correct numbers of pages, the random sequence makes things far more difficult than necessary.

On the merge screen they all appear by the same name so I have no way of manually arranging them there, either.

Other than this issue, this is by far the best PDF printer program I’ve used.

Thank you.

6

Try to use pdf architect as pdf editor. It gives you the ability to arrange the pages order.

7

Hi Greg,

it could help to use add a counter token to the filename template.
If the jobs arrive in the correct order, they should get numbered correctly and then can get sorted by name before the merge. You could also use PDF Architect to arrange the order of the pages afterwards (this is part of the free create module) but the other method might be faster. The benefit of doing it with PDF Architect is you can review everything while arranging the pages.

Best regards,

Robin

8

Numbering the files doesn’t apply here as I’m not creating files but print jobs. Our label software doesn’t allow exporting to file, simply sending the output to printer. If I could export to PDF, I wouldn’t have much use for your software.

Maybe I’ll try PDF Architect, though it doesn’t sound like much of an improvement. That would still mean having to manually rearrange hundreds of pages that are randomly merged.

Thank you for your help.

9

Greg,

I didn’t mean numbering the files/print jobs prior to sending them to the PDFCreator printer, but automatically adding a counter to them in PDFCreator so that they can be numerically ordered in the merge window/list.
But actually I just tried out my own suggestion and it didn’t work as expected. I do have 2 new suggestions that might help, though.

  1. You could try changing the advanced settings of the virtual PDFCreator printer in the printer properties to “print after the last page has been spooled” instead of “print instantly”.
  2. Adding a delay between the print jobs might also solve the problem, as they might take a different amount of time to get spooled, so e.g. job 4 might be completed before job 3, even if job 3 was printed first. Even if it works correctly on a hardware printer, it might be related to the printer setting/dirver how this is handled.

Best regards,

Robin

10

Your first suggestion nearly did it! I tried a 100+ batch and while there were a few out of sequence, they were not the norm and they at least ended up near where they were supposed to. This is a huge improvement on it’s own.

I couldn’t find anywhere to introduce the delay so I haven’t tried that.

Thank you again.

11

Hi,

glad to hear it helped a bit. The only place where there might be a possibility to add a delay between the print jobs is in the printing application itself. Most applications will not have a setting for this, but if the printing is handled by a script, you can probably add the delay in the script itself.

Best regards,

Robin