Case
We have a database of clients in our system, and we wish to keep track of their history, up-to-date information and activity of each one of them. It would be convenient to have it in a renewable PDF file titled by client ID. How do we do it?Solution
Merging files in different formats and/or different file names is very easy with FolderMill 4.0. In this article you will see in detail how to rename, convert files to PDF and combine them into a multipage PDF or TIFF.
There are 2 possible options:
| Condition | Action |
| If input files have the same filename and different format | 'Convert to PDF' (+ check Append option) to get a multipage PDF or TIFF |
| If input files have different filenames and any type of format | 'Rename document', 'Convert to PDF' (+ check Append option) and get a multipage PDF or TIFF |
If you have several different incoming files (of any type of supported format) you want to process, you should create a chain of actions like this:
'Rename document' + 'Convert to PDF' or 'Convert to Image file' -> 'Append to existing PDF' or 'Append pages to existing documents'The new files are automatically renamed and successfully appended to an existing multi-page PDF or TIFF file.
How to Append to PDF or TIFF
- Create a Hot folder and click 'Start' button
- Select 'Rename document' in a new Action Set:
- Input a desired name for the documents to be converted by replacing {Name} with the desired file name, e.g. "Combined", and leave Extension '{Ext}' untouched:
If you leave {Name} untouched, your incoming documents will be named according to their original, existing names. - For PDF: Select 'Convert to PDF' in a new Action Set
For TIFF: Select 'Convert document to Image'
- For PDF: Check 'Append to existing PDF' and click 'OK'
For TIFF: select 'Image format - TIFF' and 'Multipage - Append pages to existing document' and click 'OK'.
After all those steps, your Action Set panel will look like this:
For PDF:
For TIFF:
- Click 'Apply changes'.
Now your Hot folder is configured so that all incoming files will be automatically renamed, converted and merged into one multi-page PDF or TIFF.
Alternatively, if your files already have the same filename, FolderMill will detect this and append into the corresponding PDF or TIFF file. In this case you should omit the 'Rename document' action in the Action set and simply 'Convert to PDF' (or TIFF) as described above.
NOTE: New files are added to existing ones consecutively. In other words, the incoming documents will be added one-by-one to the end of the corresponding output PDF or TIFF file.
One of the key benefits of FolderMill is that you can append files not only of one format (e.g. JPG), but also files of various formats (image files, Word, Excel, HTML format and many more) into a PDF or TIFF.
If you have any questions or issues using this feature, feel free to contact us.
Free version
To download a free version of FolderMill and see how it would benefit your company, please visit www.foldermill.com/download
For more information about FolderMill and all features available, please visit our website: www.foldermill.com/overview
Commercial version
A commercial licence of FolderMill costs $499. You can find purchase details here: www.foldermill.com/order
Volume discounts are available starting from 2 licenses per order. We also provide special pricing for educational institutions, government, and nonprofit organizations.