I am working on a UNIX system and I'd like to merge thousands of PDF files into one file in order to print it. I don't know how many pages they are in advance.
I'd like to print it double sided, such that two files will not be on the same page.
Therefore it I'd the merging file to be aligned such that every file will begin in odd page and a blank page will be added if the next place to write is an even page.
Remember that Adobe Acrobat is unable to combine PDF files if the total file size is larger than 2 GB. To overcome this limit, we suggest using tools like Soda PDF in order to merge or split your PDF files. Soda PDF has an Online or Desktop app, both of which are easy to use for combining multiple files into one.
To combine them, just click the Alternate & Mix button. In case the files were not uploaded in the right order, drag and drop to switch them. The odd pages PDF file is should be on the left and even pages PDF file on the right.
If PDF is secured with User Level password It is suggested to use PDF Split & Merge Tool to merge PDF files that are having user-level password security. You only need to enter the password to merge any number of PDF files with the software.
Here's the solution I use (it's based on @Dingo's basic principle, but uses an easier approach for the PDF manipulation):
First, I create a PDF file with a single blank page somewhere, e.g. in "/path/to/blank.pdf".
Then, from the directory that contains all my pdf files, I run a little script that appends the blank.pdf file to each pdf with an odd page number:
#!/bin/bash
for f in *.pdf; do
let npages=$(pdfinfo "$f"|grep 'Pages:'|awk '{print $2}')
let modulo="($npages %2)"
if [ $modulo -eq 1 ]; then
pdftk "$f" "/path/to/blank.pdf" output "aligned_$f"
else
cp "$f" "aligned_$f"
fi
done
Now, all "aligned_" files have even page numbers, and I can join them using
pdftk aligned_*.pdf output result.pdf
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