A major goal of my working day is to continue to have my boss think I am some kind of technological wizard. I do this every now and again by using Remote Desktop Protocol to take over his laptop and tell him to put a red nine on a black ten while he’s playing Solitaire. Mostly I follow this flow chart when I’m working stuff out for him:
Every now and again, though, I have to go a little deeper and work a little harder to maintain my mystique. About a month ago he asked me to scan an 80 page booklet to PDF. This would normally present no challenge whatsoever as our scanner has a document feeder but this booklet was double sided and our multi-function won’t even duplex print much less scan.
Some very dedicated Googling later (it pleases me that ‘googling’ is not in the dictionary), I found out that a program I had long used for pdf management had updated without my knowing it and it now contained exactly the sort of tool I needed.
PDF Split and Merge is a very, very handy free program that adds a great many weapons to my pdf management arsenal. As of version 2.0.0, it has an automated method of interleaving two pdf files such that the pages alternate.
1. Scan in one side of your document (using a document feeder is best for this) and remember where the file ended up.
2. Scan the other side, preferably in the same order that you did the first one (though this is not necesssary)
3. Download, install and open up PDFSAM basic 2.0.0.
4. Select “Alternate Mix” from the menu tree on the left.
5. Â At the top right of the window, click the Add button and select the two files you scanned in.
6. Â If in Step 2 above you reversed the order of the pages of the second scanned file (due to the way the document feeder works or due to your own cantankerous and instruction-ignoring nature), make sure “Reverse Second Document” is checked off.
7. Â Select an output file with the green/grey Browse button on the right near the bottom.
8. Click “Run” and wait for a minute. Â Contemplate the brevity of human existence. Â Perhaps find a scone and consume it.
9. Check out the completed file. Â If the pages are out of order, revisit Step 6 above and play around with reversing the page order on either the first or second file.
10. Â Bask in the adulation of having saved the day once again through dark arts of technomancy (disappointingly also not in the dictionary).