Multiple Page PDF Generator Freeware - FOUND/RESOLVED

[mindless1]

Anyone have experience about the freeware or adware alternatives for creating multi-page PDFs?

I don't mean merely a PDF print driver that outputs from an app like MS Word but rather one where you can insert whatever you want, page by page or at a minimum combine separate PDF files and/or images into a single file, multiple page PDF.

I'm looking for something not as intrusive or bloated as something like Paperport and it need not be integrated into scanner uses, need not have WIA or TWAIN support.

It needs to be compatible with Win7 & 8 but WinXP compatibility would be a bonus.

 

[corkyg]

That's asking a lot from freeware. I do all of that and more with Nitro PDF 9. Just yesterday I used it to scan hard copy pages directly into a PDF document. But, alas! It is not free.

 

[Engineer]

I know you don't want a pdf printer driver but pdf redirect allows you to do what you want, even if not as easy as other packages. Print a page (or pages you want), leave the pdf redirect window open, print more stuff (even a whole other pdf) and when done, all of the individual files will be listed in the pdf redirect window. Hit save and done. I've used it for these features for years.

Again, I know it's not what you want but it does do, in a round-about way, what you are asking for and it's free. Works with Windows XP and 7 and am pretty sure it works with 8 too.

Edit: I just checked and you can open pdf redirect up and there is a "Merge List" where you can drag whole PDF's and then save them as one. If you want individual pages, you'll need to print them to pdf redirect separately and then add them in order to the merge list.

 

[TheELF]

Irfanview is free and does this,but has only very basic options,you have to download the plugins as well for it to work.
It also has twain but you will have to scan the files first and then ad them to the pdf once you have them all.

 

[mindless1]

FOUND ONE!

It is asking a little but not much IMO except it seems to be a feature deliberately withheld from some free versions.

For example if I scan a couple pages from an instruction manual, I can just combine them in to a single double length image in an image editing app to work around the single page PDF limitation, or the program could have just allowed the 2nd image to be a 2nd page.

I've tried making them separate pages in MS Word then using a PDF print engine but something weird happens in that the two images can be the same size, scanning in one right after the other even, but end up with different zoom or DPI or something and spill off the PDF page. Perhaps this is also deliberately built into some of the PDF print engine to keep people from using this workaround.

Anyway I have since found one freeware alternative for simple image aggregation into a multipage PDF, PDFForge's "Images2PDF": http://download.pdfforge.org/download/images2pdf

They also have an (adware supported?) app "PDFCreator" that claims to be able to merge PDF files but now I'm wading through the setup for it... went to install it and it locks up trying to install some PDFArchitect add-on that I didn't even know/want it to install.

(time lapse)

Apparently PDFCreator is just another print engine and the PDFArchitect was what I really wanted. I can get it to install by launching the installer for it separately but they've structured it as pay-per-feature. Oddly it took me to the older ver. 2 installer when the website page offers ver. 3.

Fortunately if you register your email addy they give you a free key for the "Create" module, which is a little clunky to then wait to download and install, but it seems to do what I need, allows merging multiple files into one multipage PDF for free, except it took nearly a half hour to get the whole thing installed and tested.

I saw no (adware funded style) advertisements in it but if it's pulling them off a server then I may have already had blocks in place that prevented it from connecting with the ad server.

 

[Micrornd]

You may also want to look at what PDFill Tools can do for you, both the free tools and the pay (cheap, $19.99)

PDFillTools - https://www.pdfill.com/

 

[TheGardener]

I asked the same question here a while back. Someone recommended PDFtk. It did the trick of combining multiple PDF pages.

You know what they say about looking for something and finding it under your nose? Well I discovered that the Canon all-in one software already has this utility. I just didn't know that . So now I use the same utility to scan and combine pages.

 

[mindless1]

^ Yeah my AIO probably has Paperport or some equivalent that came with it and could probably do multipage scans to PDF but I want more versatility like being able add together existing PDFs and other documents, and all the document management software seems overly bloated for that.

If I really "had" to I could probably get an organization I do some work for to spring for an Acrobat license but that too seems like bloated overkill for my needs.

I'll have to look into PDFtk and PDFill. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[mindless1]

Several months later I stopped using whatever it was and settled for PDFSam Basic. Easy to use, FREE, and only 16MB installed.
http://www.pdfsam.org/pdfsam-basic/