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How do you print multiple collated sets of a portfolio?

Explorer ,
Mar 12, 2021 Mar 12, 2021

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Hi,

 

I have created a portfolio and would like to to print multiple collated sets. So, if there are are three documents A, B and C in the portfolio and I want to print 2 sets, then I want the output to be ABCABC in sequence. I do NOT want AABBCC, which is what it currently does when I select 2 copies. Is there a way to do this?

 

Thank you for any assiatnce.

 

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How to , Print and prepress

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Community Expert ,
Mar 14, 2021 Mar 14, 2021

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See if this guidance provides the correct solution:

 

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/ways-print-pdfs.html

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Explorer ,
Mar 14, 2021 Mar 14, 2021

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Thank you. I have already seen this. Unfortunately, it does not provide the solution to my printing query.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 14, 2021 Mar 14, 2021

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Yes, I did noticed that this guidance was very brief. I checked a similar link for Nitro PDF software and the step-by-step guidance is almost identical than that of the Adobe Helpx link for Adobe Acrobat.

 

It does mention that the option to collate will appear via dropdown menu if multiple selections of files in that PDF portfolio are selected. Which you've already confirmed.

 

I am going to dig some more info about how to get that option. 

 

In the meanwhile, can you check if this option becomes available  if you selected more than three sets of prints instead of only two sets?

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Community Expert ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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Maybe I'm not following, but how is that different from just printing the document normally twice?

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Explorer ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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I have tried to print 2 copies of a portfolio with 26 documents. There is a collate checkbox. This only collates each document, not the entire set. So each document will print twice before printing the next. NOT each document is printed once and then the entire set is printed a second time. There is no dropdown option I can see for collating the entire set.

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Explorer ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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It's not different at all.

But if you have multiple sets of a large portfolio you need to print, you don’t want to be sitting there waiting for each set to finish printing then having to repeat this manually for the number of sets you need. In my case, I have large portfolios, the largest with over 60 documents, each one needing to be collated and stapled separately, and I need to print nearly 200 sets. To do this set-by-set would be extremely tedious and time consuming.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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I think I understand your issue now.

 

It seems like you're trying to print and collate the sets using your default printer device software.

 

Note that if you select from the "Printer" dropdown menu you can choose different printers or printing programs.

 

If you select to print to Adobe PDF instead you will not see the collate options because that is not an integrated feature in the Adobe Acrobat software. Instead, when you print to Adobe PDF, the selected files of that portfolio will print in alphabetical order regardless of file name or any other property attributes.

 

This is what I did following the Adobe Helpx guidance posted earlier:

 

  • I opened my PDF portfolio. It has 6 files in it. I selected only three and clicked on print.
  • From the pop-up dialogue box " PDF Portfolio  Printing Options" that followed after I clicked on the print icon, I selected "All PDF files in this portfolio" and clicked OK.
  • And When the printing dialogue window opened, I selected from the Printers dropdown menu Adobe PDF instead of my HP Deskjet printer.
  • Below that, where it says "Pages to Print" I ticked the radio button "Selected PDF files". This is the only option that becomes available when printing more than one selected file from an Adobe Acrobat PDF Portfolio. And next to that radio button there is an optional checkbox preference to print pages in reverse order, for example. I just left that blank.
  • Then you may choose other settings below that if you want, like "Choose paper source by PDF page size" if you have a printer devuce with multi-trays to feed with different page sizes (if needed)
  • So, I didn't have to mess around with other settings except for just clicking on the Print button.

 

The result of this print will be saved in a folder of your choice, that you have to save in manually. This is the only shortfall. This design behavior is not very convenient (in my opinion) if you are printing anything over 10 sets of selected files from such a big portfolio.

 

The printing to PDF is extremely lengthy too. You mayexperience long minutes for it to finish printing all of the pages of the first selected file.

 

So I am thinking , that maybe you can tweak that collate setting directly from your printer hardware options in thr dashboard. At least in my workplace we have those sem-industrial ones. I assume you have something similar. If you can't do it with the printing software application you may be able to do that manually from the printer settings.

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Explorer ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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Thank you. But I am not sure how any of this helps. If I understand you correctly, you are proposing to print pdf component files of the portfolio to pdf files. Is this correct?

 

In the end I need physical documents to distribute to my clients. I am of the view Acrobat does not have an easy way of doing what I need using portfolios. The only options appear to be:

 

  • To print each set individually.
  • To print multiple copies but then collate the sets after printing manually.
  • To produce a supersized portfolio with repeated documents with differing names. So you could have 26 documents labelled alphabetically as AA, AB, AC…AZ, which are then repeated with the labels BA, BB, BC…BZ, etc. You can do this for, say, 10 sets, so that 1 copy of the portfolio would then produce 10 copies of the set. As the portfolio is printed in alphabetical order, all of the printed documents would be in the correct sequence. This could then be repeated x times to produces 10x sets. Clearly, this method would require a lot of set up work.

 

The method I have currently adopted uses a more sophisticated approach of using a VBA program in MS Word with OLE links into Acrobat to print each component document individually and then looping to provide the number of sets I need. I was just seeing it there was a way to do it more simply within Acrobat itself.

 

 

 

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