Manipulating PDF Documents

pdftk (an Ubuntu package installed with apt-get install pdftk) is a great command-line tool for manipulating pdf files. Among other things it can compress files and pull out specific pages to create a new document. Here is an example in which selected pages are stored to a new pdf file. This is useful when you want to ask someone to print only selected pages, instead of them having to specify the page numbers in the printing dialog.
pdftk in.pdf cat 1-12 14-end output out.pdf
pdftk can join multiple input pdf files and do much more.

The pdfshuffle is a very intuitive approach to simple manipulations using only a graphical user interface. It is installed by going to http://pdfshuffler.sourceforge.net to download the latest debian package, then:
sudo apt-get install python-pypdf
sudo dpkg -i pdfshuffler_..._all.deb
pdfshuffle is especially helpful when you have a pdf file with some pages to remove and some pages to turn rightside-up. It can also merge files (by importing another file when one is already being viewed).
Topic revision: r1 - 19 Apr 2009, FrankHarrell
 

This site is powered by FoswikiCopyright © 2013-2022 by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding Vanderbilt Biostatistics Wiki? Send feedback