Bluebeam Stapler - Ability to select page(s) of PDF Document / Split and arrange document pages

James Flynn

One of the features from Adobe that we miss with Bluebeam's document-combining workflow is the ability to split a document into pages and arrange them along with other documents.

I believe 80-90% of our workflow with this could be accomplished with the ability to select a subset of page(s) from a PDF document, which could then be arranged in the Stapler tool around other documents (or other subsets of documents).

Even a "limited" version that only used contiguous page ranges would still be a huge help, as currently the main workaround seems to be first extracting a document into separate pages/ partial documents, and then using these resultant parts within Stapler.

Being able to work within stapler (and save those settings for repeatability) would really take the tool to the next level!

Ashley Cox

There are currently a few ways to combine and split pages in Bluebeam.

In the Combine PDF Files menu (File > Combine), you should have the option to add any files you want and then choose the Modify button to type in which specific pages you want to combine (i.e. "3, 5, 12-16") from each document. This would create a third document made up of whatever combined files you chose.

Conversely, you could go into the Thumbnails panel to complete more specific functions like extracting pages (one page up to every single page), inserting pages, or even slipsheeting (replace pages). In addition, you can use the batch menu to slipsheet multiple pages into your files at one time.

Would any of these options help your workflow, or is there something more specific that could be more helpful?

I see that you have this idea of saving the settings for repeatability. Do you mean specific page numbers that you might access over and over again, or something else?

James Flynn

In the Combine PDF Files menu (File > Combine), you should have the
option to add any files you want and then choose the Modify button to
type in which specific pages you want to combine (i.e. "3, 5, 12-16")
from each document. This would create a third document made up of
whatever combined files you chose.

I believe that the way the Combine PDFs dialog handles this is what I attempted to outline (and seems to be generated from a similar dialog that the Stapler tool uses), however we would want to use this functionality AND be able to save how it was set up similar to the Stapler Tool's use of ".bsx" files to save file lists/orders for future use. Would it be viable to add the underlying tool from "Combine PDF Files" to the Stapler tool?

Conversely, you could go into the Thumbnails panel to complete more
specific functions like extracting pages (one page up to every single
page), inserting pages, or even slipsheeting (replace pages). In
addition, you can use the batch menu to slipsheet multiple pages into
your files at one time.

Understood, and this has been our current workaround. The main concern being that in projects with many files and/or revision iterations increase the likelihood that an issue creeps in, so we have been interested in setting up automation that can help limit potential mistakes from manual operation.

The Batch Menu seems like it has potential in the meantime, perhaps via the "Split Documents" tool in combination with the "Slip Sheet" tool and some careful use of Page Labels, however this still appears to require a number of manual steps in addition to selecting individual pages for use.

Maybe if there was a way to also save the Manual Correlation choices in the subsequent "Match Pages" dialog?

I see that you have this idea of saving the settings for repeatability.
Do you mean specific page numbers that you might access over and over
again, or something else?

Correct, to somewhat generalize, our procedure involves a document of Section Title Pages that are then filled in with respective drawings/documents that are varying page sizes/layouts.

The stapler tool has been the most straightforward/closest to accomplishing the goal of a repeatable method (via saving the ".bsx" settings) for re-combining these files in a mostly automatic way, however the need to break up the Title Pages for sections (along with handling various page-size documents), has created complexity that we simply have to workaround for now.

I do think if the way that the "Combine PDFs" tool references files could be incorporated into the Stapler tool, it would address 80-90% of that need for our team (with a hopefully simple/minimal effort required from the Dev team).

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On a separate note, I realize that some of this seems viable via using Sets, however for our use case of the tool seems to struggle with documents spanning hundreds of pages of varying size/layout, and adds additional complexity for a significant efficiency hit compared to the Stapler Tool (e.g. one deliverable package was combine-able via Stapler, even with some manual steps, in 3-4 minutes, while the setup/loading for the equivalent Set took 30-40 minutes to process).

Using "Publish" with an organized Set via "Combine PDF" files was fairly close to the desired workflow, but the default workflow with Stapler for using/organizing whole files was much more efficient and allowed us a quicker turn-around to a final item. In particular, making a sort order for the final document/set-wide Page Index seems somewhat dependent on either "AutoMark" to create Page Labels, a manual Tag to create a Set-wide Page Index, or some combination to yield said Set-wide Page Index.

Some more advanced features may be able to be used though these, or perhaps creating an initial document (with Page Labels then serving as a full set-wide index) could be useful, however then this abstracts the Set from the underlying files we would want to Revisions….

Thank you for looking at this!

Marco M

This discussion has been moved from Product Ideas to the Tips & Tricks topic to gain more comments and visibility. This feedback has also been recorded for our Product Team.