The Combine Existing Documents action combines documents on the record into one new PDF document. The original documents are left as they are.

Its settings are on two tabs, Combine and Options.

Combine

Documents to Merge - The documents to combine, one line per Category / SubCategory / Name. A blank box matches any value, so a line with all three boxes blank matches every document on the record.


Lines are combined from the top down: every document that matches the first line, then every document that matches the second line, and so on. Drag a line to move it.

    • Add Documents adds a blank line at the bottom.
    • Copy at the end of a line adds a copy of that line at the bottom.
    • Delete at the end of a line removes it. The action always keeps at least one line, so Delete is grayed out when only one line is left.


Documents that match the same line are combined by Category, then by SubCategory, each in alphabetical order. Within one SubCategory they follow the order the documents were arranged in on the record; documents that were never moved come after those, oldest first. To control the order exactly, use one line per document.


Where to Save - The Category / SubCategory / Name for the new document. If Name is left blank, the new document takes the name of the first document combined.

Each time the action runs it adds a new document; it does not replace one saved by an earlier run. If no documents match, nothing is saved.


If Where to Save matches one of the Documents to Merge lines, a later run combines the earlier combined document as well.


Options

    • Skip Duplicates - On by default. A document that matches more than one line is combined once, at the first line it matches. Turn it off to combine a document every time a line matches it.
    • Apply Annotations - Burns the documents' annotations into the new PDF. They become a permanent part of the page and can no longer be edited or removed.
    • Copy Annotations - Copies the documents' annotations to the matching pages of the new document as editable annotations. Not available while Apply Annotations is on, because the annotations would then appear twice.
    • Copy OCR Text - Copies the OCR text of each page to the matching page of the new document, so the new document can be searched straight away. A page that was never OCR'd has no text to copy.
    • Compress PDF Output - Compresses the new PDF after it is combined. Compressing compresses images, optimizes fonts and page content, and removes metadata and anything else in the PDF that is not used to display it.


Which documents can be combined

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, XPS, RTF, image (TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP) and text files are combined, and anything that is not already a PDF is converted to PDF first. Other files that match a line, such as ZIP files and emails, are skipped.

All Category, SubCategory and Name boxes can contain static values or variables.