Converting files to PDF and batch combining

[Pam Osborne]

> I am building a digital library with documents from our organization,
> including a lot of formal proposals and reports. The proposals consist of
> about 12 separate files, some in Word and some in Excel, that I want to
> put into a PDF format and then combine into a single PDF bookmarked
> document. I have a lot of these to do and am interested in making it as
> automatic a process as possible.
> 
> Yesterday I took 12 files belonging to the same proposal, converted them
> one at a time via Excel and Word, and then combined them one at a time
> using Insert >Document; but the Excel file formatting was bad in several
> of the files and the bookmarks needed a lot of editing. I found a
> shareware utility that did a very nice job converting the Excel files, but
> couldn't process a simple cover letter from Word. Does anyone have any
> hints for getting fewer conversion errors and speeding up this process?  
> 
> I know I can combine PDF files by dragging and dropping from Windows
> Explorer to Acrobat; however, without renaming the files first, I have to
> drag and drop them one at a time because they don't show in a list in the
> order that I want them in.  Does anyone know any tricks to make this
> process go faster?
> 
> Pam Osborne, Digital Librarian
> Mercy Corps
> 3015 SW First Avenue
> Portland, Oregon 97201
> 503-471-2494   503-796-6843(fax)
> posborne at mercycorps.org
> 
>