I need to merge/combine several PDF files.
What I have is multiple PDF files in one folder. The PDFs that need to be clubbed/combined together would have a partial file name in common; for example:
123456_ABCD.pdf 123456_EFGH.pdf 123456_IJKL.pdf The file name would start with numbers then underscore then file name. I'm going to have hundreds of similar PDFs, and I'm looking for a way to automatically merge these files using a batch script, VBA in Excel, or whatever.
The output of the new file should be in a separate folder with the name 123456.pdf. I use a Windows OS. I have Adobe Reader, PDF995 and CutePDFwriter installed in my system.
I can manage to get all the pdf's in one main folder. That folder would have multiple pdf's like below.
123456_ABCD.pdf 123456_EFGH.pdf 123456_IJKL.pdf 111111_ABCD.pdf 111111_EFGH.pdf 222222_IJKL.pdf 222222_WXYZ.pdf In this scenario the pdf's that I am expecting in the output folder are:
123456.pdf 111111.pdf 222222.pdf 1 Answer
(Untested)
- Download pdftk (direct link here).
- Extract it somewhere.
- Put pdftk.exe and the batch together.
- Then open
cmdwhere the batch is located* and run it.
* (shift+RightClic open command prompt here)
The script should works if the folder structure is like this:
| +---111111 | 111111_ABCD.pdf | 111111_EFGH.pdf | +---123456 | 123456_ABCD.pdf | 123456_EFGH.pdf | 123456_IJKL.pdf | \---222222 222222_IJKL.pdf 222222_WXYZ.pdf And not in a single folder where all the files are there.
@echo off setlocal enabledelayedexpansion rem source root folder where to crawl pdfs. set "source=c:\mydoc\pdf" rem destination folder set "destination=c:\mydoc\merged" for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b /s /ad /o:n "%source%"') do ( set _pdffiles= for /f "delims=" %%i in ('dir /b /a-d /o:n "%%a\*.pdf"') do ( set _pdffiles=!_pdffiles! "%%i" set "_outputpdf=%%~ni" ) echo pdftk.exe !_pdffiles! cat output "%destination%\!_outputpdf:~0,6!.pdf" ) Remove echo if you think the batch is Okay.
Answer largely inspired by this
