Merge two PDF files containing even and odd pages of a book

Question

I have two searchable PDF documents, say even.pdf and odd.pdf which contain even and odd pages of a book, respectively.

I can decompile each PDF to separate files 001.pdf 002.pdf 003.pdf, et cetera. The question is how to merge them?

They are both even and odd sequences numbered 1, 2, 3. If the numbering in the decompile process with pdftk were different, e.g. 1, 3, 5 for even and 2, 4, 6 for odd instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, I could simply merge them.

Can I do this any other way?

Answer 1

Of the top of my head, I would combine pdftk with mmv:

• First burst both files into separate directories, getting even/001.pdf and odd/001.pdf etc.
• Then use mmv '*.pdf' '#1-a.pdf' on the odd folder, mmv '*.pdf' '#1-b.pdf' on the even folder.
• Move everything into one folder. The shell expansion * should now sort odd pages before even pages (001-o, 001-e, 002-o, 002-e etc.).
• Use pdftk as in pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf

Maybe you have to do the last bit in loops for, say, the first thirty pages, then another thirty pages etc., depending on how robust your shell expansion is with many files.

Answer 2

A simple solution would be to use only pdftk in the following way:

pdftk A=even.pdf B=odd.pdf shuffle A Bend-1 output merged.pdf

Answer 3

Check out Sejda - A New Advanced Online PDF Manipulation Tool (still in Beta)

http://sejda.com/

It has the ability to merge docs in different ways, and maybe able to accomplish your requirements above.

Answer 4

I use pdf Split and Merge

Besides being able to merge files it is capable of other interesting operations.

Answer 5

I had spent an hour looking for a solution to process three huge files until I found this forum and tried the http://sejda.com/. It has done an amazing job - exaclty what I wanted: merge two documents (one containing odd pages, and second containing even page in a reverse order). A great online service I would recommend to everyone who needs to process big pdf files. Thanks to Sejda team!

Answer 6

well what you are asking is slightly complicated, but for starters you could try something like Combine PDFs Free or any other page. If you have trouble let me know and i can try help :P

regards cam