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Using PDFCreator to Combine and Save Multiple Prints in One PDF File

One of the features that I've had trouble finding in any PDF creation software other than Click2PDF is the ability to print multiple times into the PDF creation software's progam, and then to be able to save the prints as one big PDF file. Even better is the ability to delete some of those prints (if they're not exactly what I wanted) or to change the order of the items.

PDFCreator does all those things! It's not quite as easy as Click2PDFf, but the price is right...

First, we need to print a file to PDFCreator. We'll get the PDFCreator dialog box that would allow us to save the PDF file. But, more importantly we get a button hat says "Wait – Collect."

That button will put "printer" on hold so that we can print another document (or web page) into the PDFCreator workfiles.

In the image on the right, in the background, we see that there are two printed documents waiting for PDFCreator to do something with them.

If we wanted to change their order, we could right-click on one of the file names, and we'd get an option to move it up or down. We would also get an option to delete that item, if we like.

In the previous article, we saved the documents as separate PDF files. This time, let's combine them into one PDF file. As you can see, under PDFCreator's Document menubar, we have the option "Combine all" which will do that for us.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

In the image below on the left, we see the resulting combined file that's 2.23 megabytes. But, it is not a PDF file yet. It's just a combination of the data and is part of PDFCreator's work files.

Now, we need to turn that combined file into a PDF file, so we can save it with all its images and formatting.

(click on the image for a larger version)

We can do that by using the PDFCreator menu bar's selection (click on Printer > Printer stop to release the PDFCreator printer to continue its work. Or, we can click on the Printer Stop icon in PDFCreator. Either way works fine.

Now, we get PDFCreator's print/save dialog box again. Click the Save button. You'll get the standard Windows Save File dialog box, which you can use to navigate, name and save the PDF file where you want it.

(click on the image for a larger version)

Related articles:

• Creating PDF Files with PDFCreator
• Using PDFCreator to Save Print Jobs as Individual PDF Files

Copyright © 2009 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.