You have torn up your back patio, and have made plans to pour your own cement for the new patio. At 10 a.m., the cement mixer shows up right on time, and backs into your driveway. Uh-oh, you didn't think this out as thoroughly as you should have. All that cement has to get to the back of your house, and the spinning behemoth in your driveway can't get back there without flattening your 60 year old mimosa tree and destroying your beautiful lawn.
The guys from the cement truck ask you how many wheel barrows you have. Wheel barrows, of course! It'll take a dozen or so trips from the front to the back of the house, but the wheel barrow will transport your massive load in smaller bits. Perfect!
What does this have to do with Adobe Acrobat? Plenty, actually. My problem is that I have a PDF that I want to share with a colleague. The PDF is a huge 330 pages… too big to attach to an email.
Time to pull out my digital wheel barrow: the Split Document command in Acrobat 9 Professional.
The PDF has been bookmarked into six sections, so I'll ask Acrobat to split the document into 6 separate PDF documents, each one based on the original's bookmarks. The command is: Document > Split Document.
Acrobat gives you 3 different ways to divvy-up the pieces; by number of pages, by file size, or by top-level bookmarks. I opted for the bookmarks option, since the document was already so nicely partitioned for me.
By clicking the Output Options button, I am given the opportunity to specify where the split files will be saved, and how they will be named (adding a label as a prefix, for example).
The end result is six smaller PDF files, and six pieces that are each small enough to attach to individual emails and send to anyone I choose.
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Want to learn more about Adobe Acrobat? Click here.
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David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. He is an Adobe-Certified Expert in Acrobat.