Splitting existing pdfs by file size?

[peterbrianb]

I have a document management system with a file size limit i.e. files exceeding the limit cannot be saved in the system.

Users sometimes have PDF files over the limit.

In Adobe Acrobat there is a function to "split" a file and specify the file size limit for each piece of the split file. This would allow my users to break the overall file into pieces and then save the pieces to the system.

There is an Extract function in Editor but this would require more manual effort so I am looking for an efficient way to do it.

Is there a similar function in PDF xChange Editor? If so, where?

[Patrick-Tracker Supp]

Hello peterbrianb,

Thanks for the post and welcome to our forums. Currently, the only way to do this would be via Extract pages. I have created a formal feature request for this as I believe this would be a nice feature for many users.

I am obligated to inform you that we do not guarantee that feature requests will be implemented. We can only guarantee that each feature request will be seriously considered by the development and project management teams.

Thank you very much for your suggestion and feedback!

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi peterbrianb,

Can you advise on where, in Acrobat this feature can be found? I'd like to try here, but I'm not particularly familiar with Acrobat and can't find this under the Split or Extract pages features, in Acrobat DC.

Cheers,

[HaPe]

Got curious myself and gave Google a try:
The video link should give the answer how to split a file by size
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/how-to/ ... ument.html

HaPe

[Arnold]

One way that might work is to use Advanced -> Bookmarks -> Bookmark Every Nth Page. Then use Documents -> Split Document By Bookmarks. So if you have a large 200 page file, bookmark every 25 pages and then split it using the bookmarks with the Split Document command.

I tried it with 314.1 and it worked well. I then actually tried to move the Split Documents command to the menu where the Bookmark Every Nth Page command is as they seemd to belong together. It would not work as the Advanced -> Bookmarks features are in a Plug In.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Guys,

Thank you all for the suggestions!
Indeed if the document is relatively uniform - using the bookmarks will work, however if you need to guarantee that a file will be smaller than e.g. 5mb so that it can go through e-mail - then this might not work if say there are 2-3 pages with print quality images , and the rest of the file is pretty much plain text. As Patrick said above - there is a formal feature request in place and we will consider this feature's usability and demand and decide whether and when to implement it.

Regards,
Stefan

[llbmtheking]

Hi, any news from this "desired option"?

Thanks in advance,

Lbm.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi LBM,

my apologies if I am being obtuse, which "desired option" are you referring to?

[llbmtheking]

Hi, I am talking about the title of the posts: to be able with PDF-XChange Editor to Split one .pdf file into a fixed size files. Still there are there a few emails accounts that's not permits receive attached files more than 1 MB, for example. This, without using the "Extract pages" option, that is very slow when a large number of pages are involved.

Also I have found that the "Combine" option from Adobe Acrobat is ver powerfull to crunch the size of combined .pdf files into another one (the oposite of the post title). The PDF-XChange combine option is not so much good: the 2 same files combined with PDF-XChange results in 980 Kb, but with Adobe Acrobar X, result in 492 Kb....

I need some help also in the "Combine" (join) option from PDF-XChange if there is any way to increase the compression ratio.

Thanks in advance!

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Ibmtheking,

I am sorry to say that there is no new development on the "split to size" feature that ahs been requested here. Unfortunately it is not feasible at this point in time, as it would require repeatedly splitting portions of the document to find out which grouping gets closest to a certain size, and would need to repeat that process countless times per split segment of the document. Beyond that, there simply is not enough demand or merit in developing such a feature at this time.

AS for combining, unfortunately there is no way to change the compression used in this function, If you can send us a copy of the documents you are combining and seeing a file half the size in adobe, we can compare and work to improve our combination techniques for the future.

Kind regards,

[winkelmann]

is there any chance for changinmg development policy for this feature? I will use it nearly dayily if available. I _need_ it!

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, winkelmann

Our new feature Development policy is always to develop the most needed features first (such as our upcoming accessibility overhaul), followed by highly requested items next (less complex tasks requiring minimal resources often seeing priority), and then finally onto the other requests.

Through that process we assign each task to the appropriate developers who are most fluent with those aspects of the software. We will not be changing any development policies, if a highly requested feature that you want is not being implemented fast enough, it simply means that the correct people for the job are working on something more important.

Rest assured that eventually we will be offering this, but I cannot offer a timeline or make any changes to the ticket status at the moment.

Kind regards,

[vinirockman]

Hello Ibmtheking,

I am sorry to say that there is no new development on the "split to size" feature that ahs been requested here. Unfortunately it is not feasible at this point in time, as it would require repeatedly splitting portions of the document to find out which grouping gets closest to a certain size, and would need to repeat that process countless times per split segment of the document. Beyond that, there simply is not enough demand or merit in developing such a feature at this time.

AS for combining, unfortunately there is no way to change the compression used in this function, If you can send us a copy of the documents you are combining and seeing a file half the size in adobe, we can compare and work to improve our combination techniques for the future.

Kind regards,

Let me help you to change your mind (eventually your priorities).
The whole Judiciary System (and lots of other administrative government systems) in Brazil works with limited sizes of PDF (which varies from 2~3mb). This feature isn't only efficient, but wanted/needed to brazilian users that works with the government systems.
There's no other option available than Adobe Reader DC. I was looking myself for another alternatives, but I found none so far. If you develop this feature on your software, you'll probably be one of the few softwares to do this (if there is any other than Adobe Reader DC).
To put this in another words, you'll develop a feature to a whole country. With the correct marketing, you'll be able to lead the software market here (which is currently lead by no one).

Best regards.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, vinirockman

We do understand that there is large demand for this, and I apologize for being unclear in my previous post. The reason that this specific feature is not currently seeing any progress is because

1. It is highly complex (as indicated by the fact that no-one beyond Adobe even offers it) and thus prone to error if not done very carefully
2. The developers required for this implementation are currently dedicated to developing the Accessibility overhaul we have planned for V9, and after the release will likely be primarily allocated to fine tuning any potential issues with it we encounter then.
3. The accessibility features take priority as they will soon be a legal requirement of our software in some countries, not simply "a handy tool for a lot of people".

Unlike adobe, we do not have hundreds of developers or support staff, we have small specialized teams. This allows us to have a more personal interaction with clients like yourself, but it does limit our production capabilities in some aspects. Outside of all that, much like this feature, there are countless others which are very highly demanded and will undoubtedly help entire countries worth of people when implemented. We have many millions of clients already and that is with a 0 dollar marketing budget (we firmly believe in word of mouth, if our software is worth it, it will sell itself without intervention).

Kind regards,

[david king]

If you need to split a PDF by file size, I recommend downloading the free PDFsam Basic program from PDFsam.org. (Note: Be aware to uncheck the option to also install a trial version of the PDFsam Enhanced offering if using the Windows downloader for PDFsam Basic.)

PDFsam Basic is open source and free for both personal and commercial use. The current Version 4 of PDFsam Basic runs on 64-bit Windows, Mac OS and Linux and includes modules for splitting and merging PDF files and for rotating and extracting pages. It is bundled with an open source version of Java, so there is no need to separately install Oracle's version to run the program.

I found the split by size task in PDFsam Basic to work quite well on the few large PDF files I tried. The name of each resulting file includes a prefix with the starting page of that file. If your file is amenable to splitting into smaller files (and not all are) and some of the files produced by the program are slightly larger than the max file size you specified, try slightly reducing the specified file size and running the task again --- note: size must be entered as an integer number of MB or KB, e.g., 2.5 MB must be entered as 2500 KB. Changing the max file size can affect not only the size of the resulting files, but also the number of files and their total size.

If you enter the Google search (pdfsam split by file size), you will get a link to the pdfsam.org page that describes the PDFsam Basic split module and a link to a 22 Mar 2018 blog describing how the PDF split function works and why some PDFs may not split into files as small as expected. Consult these links for further details.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello david king,

Thanks for sharing this! Hope it will be useful to others!

Kind regards,
Stefan