Alistair wrote:
I have a two page letter that, when merged, becomes a 40-page document — that is, 20 x 2 page letters. I want to be able to save each letter as a separate PDF. Is there a way of doing this all in one go? Or do I have to save each of the 2 pages as PDFs individually until I’ve saved all 20 letters?
I was convinced that you would have to do this manually until last week, when another reader informed me of a small utility that would do it, called PDF Splitter & Merger. Unfortunately, it appears to be Windows-only, and it also costs money. I have no problem with things costing money — developers need to get paid for their work. But I need a Mac solution myself, so I kept looking and soon found a free open source, Mac OS and Windows solution called PDF Split and Merge, a.k.a. PDFsam.
Now, like many open source apps, this one took some time to figure out. I mean, the user interface is simple, but not obvious, if you know what I mean. It also runs inside Java, so it kind of like a mixe between Windows 98 and Linux. That said, after 4 minutes of clicking around, I figured it out and it’s quite amazing. (Click the image below to zoom in on it.)
Here’s the quick rundown: Start the application, choose Split in the window on the left, click the Add button on the right to add the big PDF file (the one you want split up), choose the ‘Split every “n” pages’ radio button, fill out the rest of the options if you want, then click Run. Then, if you find yourself using this often, please visit SourceForge, sign in (free), and donate some euros or dollars or rubles or yen or something to the team who wrote this.
I wish InDesign’s Data Merge feature could do this for you, but it can’t. Until CS5 (or 6?), we’ll just have to run one of these sorts of programs on the final PDF file.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on September 30, 2008
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