Seems every time Adobe creates a new version of Acrobat, it gets even better about handling law office files that are being reviewed, edited or submitted. 

One of the coolest features is it’s ability to merge many files into one, and what makes this feature even cooler is that they don’t all have to be PDFs or even the same format.  You can combine Word, Excel, and even .tif images into one PDF.  In this demo, I’m using  Adobe Acrobat Professional 9.  However, this feature is also available in the Adobe Acrobat Standard and Extended Pro versions.

In this scenario, I have been asked to provide outside counsel with copies of certain files in a case.  The files are presently stored as .tif images in my Summation database.  Using Adobe’s ‘Merge Files’  feature, I will create one PDF file containing all the files for the outside counsel to review.

Okay, let’s get started!

• Open Adobe Acrobat and from the toolbar, click the Create button.
• From the drop-down menu, select Merge Files into a Single PDF…  

•  There are four choices for adding your files.  In our scenario, I copied the files into a separate folder, so I’ll select Add Folders…

•  The Browse for Folder dialog box appears.   In this scenario,  my files are in a subfolder called “Outside” under the My Documents folder.
• I’ll highlight the folder and click OK.

• Use the Move Up ↑ and Move Down ↓ buttons to reorder the files, if necessary. 

• The Remove button allows you to delete some of the files before you combine. 

•  If you have a multi-page document, the Choose Pages button allows you to remove certain pages from a single document before combining the files. 

• Options are available to change the way the conversion works.  We will leave them at their default for our example scenario.

• Click the Combine Files button. 

• As each file is converted, a green check mark displays to the right to show the conversion was “Successful.”

• When the process of conversion and combining  is complete, you are prompted to name your combined file and click Save.

• With your PDF open, you can add other features like  comments, page numbering, and more.

In  future posts, I’ll share some other great features I L-O-V-E about Adobe Acrobat 9!