Upland OL User community

Smarter PDF file handling and merging

#1

Hi all,

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can provide to the following query.

My question in short is, is there a way I can group hundreds (sometimes thousands) of PDFs in a way that doesn’t slow as the grouped file gets bigger.

So, the detail…

  1. I am given 2 input files containing records - 1 is a text file, 1 a PDF
  2. The 2 files are processed and output individual PDF files into separate folders
  3. The files in the 2 output folders are then merged based on filenames
  4. The merged files are then grouped into 1 file
  5. That grouped file is then processed to apply barcoding for mailing

The process was designed in this way before I joined the company so all that’s been done by me is to create Connect templates and presets and implement them. I am now looking at redesigning processes and speeding them up where possible.

Thank you

#2

If I am understanding you correctly then there comes a limit with any file which beyond a certain point, requires too much memory to render the content to screen and so why would you continuously merge documents to create one, single, unwieldy PDF? Surely you’d be better to keep them separate and managed via some indexing system or better yet, a DMS?

Have I misunderstood your question? How many documents would we be talking in the maximum size grouped PDF?

#3

As I say, this was how it was done before by my predecessor, they’re no longer around for me to ask why. I can only assume it was done to make the barcoding/numbering of the documents easier. 1 file is easier to pick up and process etc.

So yesterday, there were 639 separate PDFs (8 pages each) which resulted in a 5112 page 160MB single PDF.

However, when we have an end of year run, we sometimes have about 1 to 3 thousand that are merged to make it easier when printing.