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Thread ID: 143033	2016-11-04 00:58:00	Help needed manipulating PDF files	Tony (4941)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1428318	2016-11-04 00:58:00	I'm trying to archive a whole lot of old newsletters, stored as PDFs. They are 4 A4 pages, formatted as 2 A3 pages (1 & 4 and 2 & 3). They were issued as printed documents, but now we want to archive them to the web. I would like to change the files to be 4 individual pages so they can be easily read in the correct order. Does anyone know how I can do that and still preserve the qualities of the original PDF? I've managed various laborious cut and paste solutions but apart from being time-consuming they all end up with pages being images that get fuzzy as they are enlarged. There are also about 10 years x 12 months worth of these, so a speedy conversion process is also going to be helpful. All suggestions gratefully received.	Tony (4941)
1428319	2016-11-04 01:05:00	There was a post similar to yours not so long ago. ( don't have time to locate it right now) but you can convert the original back to something more editable like word documents, then resave as new PDf's. Most office suites will do it, for example if you have Office 2013 /2016 or Open Office open the PDF in Word, then resave after making changes required and from memory ( may very well not be saying this right) if you selected print - and have a PDF creator ( most PDf viewers put one in the print options) select separate pages. You can also try one of the many online sites Example: https://www.pdftoword.com/	wainuitech (129)
1428320	2016-11-04 02:00:00	I haven't worked with pdf in ages but it would have saved you trouble if you created those pages as singular pages instead of combining two pages as the one. Then in page layout you use two up to get your A3 page. Anyways, you can use javascript to show the pdf how you want it without changing the file, or there are numerous tools around that can split pages down the middle or crop to new page.	Kame (312)
1428321	2016-11-04 03:41:00	Tony, Clarification - is there some aspect of the PDF documents that should be preserved? e.g. handwriting by an ancient relation, inset photos, specialized fonts etc etc. Or do you simply want to resurrect the content into readable, printable text?	coldot (6847)
1428322	2016-11-04 04:57:00	Kame: I wasn't the original author/creator, and when the docs were created there was no thought of archival requirements. The files go back to about 1996 when of course the whole idea of making stuff like this available online was much less in people's minds. What were the line speeds then - had we got past 56kps? This is a fairly big task as I said earlier. 20 years x about 11 copies = around 220 files to deal with, so anything I can do to speed up the process is going to be very welcome. Some of them are straight PDF. Some of them are PDF that have been zipped. I've actually just found an even earlier one from 1993 which is actually single pages, so maybe I'll get a bit luckier as I get into it. Do you have names for any of the tools you describe? I've had an initial look around and haven't found anything that looks like it will do what I want. Coldot: I'm guessing you are leading up to saving them as Word docs and then recreating them as PDF. Alas I suspect that is not going to be a practical solution. The docs are full of graphics as well as text, and also part of the charm is seeing them as they were originally published. The very earliest ones are from 1988, for which I am having to scan paper copies to PDF. The earliest ones were produced on a fairly cheap dot-matrix printer so it it is quite interesting to see how the look improved along with the technology.	Tony (4941)
1428323	2016-11-04 22:41:00	I've looked at Acrobat (9.5) a bit more and it seems the crop tool might work. I hadn't looked at it before as I haven't had a need. It looks like the workflow would be: Open the original document. do 4 "crop and saveas" operations to end up with each page as an individual file. Combine those files into one PDF. Have I got that right? The issue I would have to resolve is that the original content would still be part of the combined file, making it considerably larger than it would otherwise be. Is there a means of permanently removing the hidden content? I suppose I could print each individual cropped page to PDF, but that is another operation, and with 200+ files to manipulate I would really like to streamline it as much as possible. I do have some programming skills: would I be able to automate it somewhat with Javascript? Or am I going to have any luck looking harder for 3rd-party tools?	Tony (4941)
1428324	2016-11-05 22:26:00	Basically you want to do bulk PDF splitting? I think the pdf print command is used. Splitting can be done either in Google Drive and also separately and easily in the Chrome browser. (goo.gl) You may be able to boost/streamline with an add-on/app, e.g. kami chrome add-on. (chrome.google.com)	kahawai chaser (3545)
1428325	2016-11-05 22:59:00	Thanks for the link. I looked at Kami tools and while it is an impressive app I don't think it will do exactly what I want. As far as I could see it will take a PDF of many individual pages and split them into many files. That is not my situation. I have a PDF that consists of 2 A3 pages formatted as 2-up pages, 1 & 4 and 2 & 3. I need to change that into 4 separate pages, 1,2,3,4. Kami wouldn't do that for me. On the Adobe forum I have been given some Javascript that looks promising, so I'm just trying that out. I've also looked more closely at the 200+ files and it appears that a fair proportion are in fact already set up as individual pages, which will make the job easier. Why the differences I have no idea.	Tony (4941)
1428326	2016-11-06 00:03:00	If you just want to split PDF documents into separate pages PDF Sam is what you need quite a simple tool to use.	gary67 (56)
1428327	2016-11-06 00:24:00	Thanks for the link Gary. As far as I can see PDFSAM, the free version at least, works the same as KAMI, i.e. it will split a 4-page PDF into two or more separate files, but won't split a 2-up page into 2 single pages.	Tony (4941)
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