We had a need recently to batch insert a pdf into hundreds of other PDFs prior to distribution. There are a lot of slimy PDF applications out there that seem to be able to help compile merged PDFs, but I wasn’t happy when I tried a bunch of them. The good news is Adobe Acrobat XI has the Action Wizard functionality that can do this pretty easily. Here is how we did it.
1. Put all the PDFs you want to augment into a folder. Put the PDF you want to insert into all the PDFs in that folder outside the folder.
2. Go into Acrobat Pro (Version X or higher) and go to Tools > Action Wizard
3. Go ahead and “Create a New action” and change the first area of “Files to be Process” default option to “Add Folder” and under “Pages” add “Insert Pages” and specify settings as desired. You can leave the defaults.
4. Add “Save” to the action sequence after insert so you won’t have to save each individual PDF after the insert happens.
5. Inside the “Save” tool, you can decide to tweak the filenames as well. We left them at default so they save over the existing PDFs.
6. Save the action.
and you will see this in your Acrobat Pro > Tools > Action Wizard menu.
7. Click the saved action to start the batch process. Specify the folder for all the PDFs you will be inserting pages into. When you select the folder, it will put a list of the pdfs in the preview.
8. Click “Start” to be prompted for the PDF you want to insert.
9. And then the magic happens. Acrobat should go through the PDFs in the specified folder and play the insert. This is much, much better than having to play the inserts manually to the dozens or hundreds of PDFs.
Brilliant!!
Thanks. Glad it helped. It has really been helpful for me.
Brilliant! Can’t my google search for this got such a recent answer, only 1 month old!
Drove me crazy that no one had this documented when I needed it. I hope it was helpful for you.
Is there a way to do this with multiple different pdfs on both sides? I need to combine individual letters into individual reports. The final output should be five hundred files in total, I’d really like to not have to do it manually.
Not quite sure what you mean. Yeah, you are going to want to do this in an automated way. You might even want to think of it as a 2 pass situation.
Hi, when i add the files that i want to insert a page for them every time i click resume it asks me which from which pdf i want to insert the page please help me i need it for more than 3,000 pdf !
Thank you,
Jack, I had the same issue at first. Make sure to uncheck the prompt user box under Insert Pages so it doesn’t prompt you for which PDF to insert each time.
Hi Jonathon.
Having a little problem getting a result here and wondered if you may be able to help please. When I start the process the action works fine for the first pdf in the folder but for each subsequent pdf’s it asks me to select the ‘add on’ file again.
Am I correct in assuming this would happen automatically. I followed the instructions to the letter and actually set up three different test actions. Are you able to point a finger as to where I might be mucking this up.
Regards
Stu
The trick for that is to click Specify Settings under Pages when making the Action and it will prompt you to choose the file. Then when you run the script it will apply that file each time you run it. So for the future you would need to edit the Action and change it each time.
TRIAD- this is key! you saved me. thank you!
Thanks for posting.
Great!
Bless you dude!
Cool. Glad it helped.
Thanks for the directions Jonathan. Such a time saver. One question. When I ran through this the action does not automatically update each pdf in the folder. Instead I have to click start > select pdf to add > then OK for each pdf in the folder. Any advice?
Thank you for this guide. I could not find one anywhere else.
And it works beautifully, and has helped me understand how Actions work.
Awesome!
You still have fans! Thank you for this!
any solution when there are multiple files that needs to be inserted too.
Thank you!
Hello. I have multiple pdf’s that need the last page replaced, but the pdfs are all different numbers of pages.
Is there a way to replace last page?
Worked great! Then, after our One Drive installation, the script runs, but the pages are not inserted. Does it need to be set up again in One Drive? I can’t figure it out.
Wow it works. the best part is its GUI. thank you so much you are a GOD sent
Hi Jonathan,
With this wizard, this combines all files n the folder into one pdf and then inserts my page. How do I get it to add the page to each file separately?
Thanks
Never mind, my files were password protected. 🙂
Oh excellent. Yeah, this was one of those things that you know should be easy, but was amazingly challenging so when I ran into that and had that need for an organization, I was determined to try and put something out there so others wouldn’t have to feel the pain. I’m so very glad it was a helpful post. Thanks for taking the time to post a comment and let me know this is still helpful! Take care, Jonathan
This is amazing – it saved me hours of tedious work. I knew there had to be a simpler way!
Eric, so nice of you to post that this helped. I was right there too and was looking at a ton of time to handle something that sure seemed able to be at least semi-automated but couldn’t find anything out the web for it, so did this post after getting it going. Glad it worked for you too! -Best, Jonathan
It’s stopping at each document and asking for the document again. Do you know how to fix this?
Sorry I do not. Perhaps others have run into this? I could imagine something has changed since this was many versions ago now.
Jonathan, Thank you so much for these clear, step by step instructions. It worked perfectly (almost 8 years later) and it will save me a ton of time. I surely do appreciate it.
I’m on Windows 10 Pro using Acrobat Pro
Judy, that is remarkable! Thank you so much for posting a comment here and letting me know this is still helpful!
All the best,
Jonathan
Awesome!!! This helped me save time! The only thing I did differently (or so I think) was on the Save, I removed the check from Prompt user to not have to save everytime as I already had the files named. Thank you!!!!!
Incredible this is still helping folks. Makes my day. Thank you for taking time to comment.
Take care,
Jonathan