Merging Multiple PDF Files

Introduction

The foremost objective of merging PDF files is assuring proper file management.

Sound file management practices involve several actions such as devising a file-naming strategy, building a folder structure, designing reliable backup strategies, and others. Adopting such practices provides many benefits to an organization, such as enhanced security, increased productivity, easier access to documents, and better collaboration along with other benefits.

Most often, archiving, bulk printing, or combining data sheets necessitate an efficient tool to merge several PDF files into a single all-inclusive PDF.

Do you ever wish you could merge documents? See if these common use cases apply to you:

• Adding new pages to an existing document.
• Adding a signature page template to an existing document.
• Combining multiple attachments received from someone into a single document.
• Consolidating documents from multiple repositories.

We can also consider the following scenario:

Let’s say we have a student lab with one shared network printer. When a student sends multiple print jobs related to different PDF documents, in a disorderly manner, this might lead to a mix up with the printed documents of other students. However, if this student merges his PDF documents and prints the resulting PDF in one shot, this problem will be solved.

Scope

The purpose of this lesson is to demonstrate how to merge a group of PDF files into a single PDF, using a lightweight command-line-based utility developed in the Python programming language. We may include bookmarks in the resulting combined PDF to simplify the navigation, where each bookmark is linked to the content of one of the inputted PDF files.