Participant

Question

Problem duplicating first PDF when combining multiple PDF files

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 27, 2020
4 replies
25764 views

I am trying to combine 100+ PDF forms into one PDF for ease of eliminating pages, printing, etc. Each PDF has 3 pages, and only need to print pages 1-2 of each document. When I use the tool to "combine files into one PDF", and getting the files ready is easy (going through choosing pages 1-2 only). When the tool works to combine them, there are no errors, but the final results duplicates the PDF 133 times (for 133 files). I believe it has to do with some security setting but I cannot find anything in the community on how to fix the issue. Any suggestions?

This topic has been closed for replies.

K

kayw85robert

Participant

You haven't lost your mind. What is happening to you is happening to just ONE member of our staff, and no one else (even when they are combining the exact same files, the exact same way), and it did not start happening to that person until a few months ago. I don't have a solution for you; but, again, it's an actual issue.

K

kayw85robert

Participant

I sit corrected: It's the form fields. If you set up an action that includes a production preflight step of "flatten annotations and form fields," then the saved PDFs won't do that (as the fields are no longer fields, but text).

H

Heide5EEC

Participant

Same issue happening here. How do we perfom this please?

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Printing to Adobe PDF will flatten the form fields.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

If two fields have the same name, they WILL have the same value. That’s fundamental to PDF forms. So what you see is normal, if unwelcome.

l_bull_wisgAuthor

Participant

My computer won't combine them. However, another co-worker with the same Acrobat version, can do it as the combine PDF works on her computer. The workaround is to send these to her to combine but that's not efficient in the long run.

Thom Parker

Community Expert

Fields with the same name share the same value. It doesn't matter who combines the forms, this is always true.

So the form is not being duplicated when you combine the files, the field values are being duplicated.

If you're co-worker is combining the forms and the field values are not duplicated, then they are doing something to rename or remove the fields. Probably flattening the forms before combining. Or using a 3rd party tool.

I would suggest finding out exactly what they are doing.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Are this documents with the same form fields?

l_bull_wisgAuthor

Participant

Yes, exactly the same form, duplicated multiple times. This is an IRS fillable form, and we use a macro-enabled Excel document to populate the data. When the PDFs come out, they are all the same and separate PDFs. The original form is 3 pages; the 3rd page is not necessary, so we eliminate that one on each PDF. Then combining at the end of that process, so each form has 2 pages, and the tool duplicates the 1st form 133 times.

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Flatten the form fields before you combine the files. Or combine the files as a portfolio.

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