Do you often share PDFs with your colleagues? Do you sometimes have a mix of files – Word documents, PowerPoint slides, print material, electronic images, or forms that need to be packaged together to be shared?
Acrobat’s Combine Files (
) feature enables you to combine different files into a single PDF or a PDF package for easy sharing. By providing quick access to all the required content in a single package, you can avoid the inconvenience of sending multiple attachments.
Acrobat provides two main options for combining files – binders and portfolios. Simply put, a binder is a single PDF file, while a portfolio (as its name suggests) is like a folder that holds multiple files within it. When Acrobat creates a binder file, by default it is named Binder followed by a number (e.g., Binder3). Similarly, when Acrobat creates a portfolio file, by default it is named Portfolio followed by a number (e.g., Portfolio7).
Now, let’s explore the difference between a binder and a portfolio to determine when each of these options should be used.
A scenario is provided as an example to better explain the difference.
Scenario: You want to combine three different files – a PDF file (10 pages), a PPT file (10 slides), and a Word doc (20 pages). See the results below to determine which option (binder or portfolio) works best for you:
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Binder: A single binder PDF file of 40 pages is generated with the PDF, PPT, and Word document pages displaying consecutively.
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Portfolio (If you chose to keep the files in their native format): A single portfolio PDF is generated with three files in the following order: first a 10-page PDF, then a 10-page PPT, and lastly a 20-page Word doc.
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Portfolio (If you chose to convert the files into PDFs): A single portfolio PDF is generated with three PDF files each of 10 pages (PDF), 10 pages (PPT converted to PDF), and 20 pages (Word doc converted to PDF) in it.
Note that you can also convert a portfolio into a binder using Combine Files and all files within the portfolio will be converted to PDF pages and a single binder PDF file will be created.
To learn the steps for combining files in Acrobat, check out my next blog.
Discover more Acrobat features by checking out other blogs in this series.
Part 1 – Adobe PDF Basics
Part 2 – Extracting Pages
Part 3 – PDF Security
Part 4 – Managing Security Policies
Part 5 – Title Bar Display
Part 6 – Creating Forms
Part 7 – Sharing and Tracking Electronic Forms
Part 8 – Five Useful Features
Part 9 – Combining Files (An Introduction)
Part 10 – Steps for Combining Files
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