AutoSplit PDF: Efficient Document Splitting
AutoSplit PDF: Efficient Document Splitting
Table of Contents
What software do I need? ............................................................................................................................ 2
What splitting methods are available? ......................................................................................................... 2
What documents can be split? ..................................................................................................................... 2
Where do I start? .......................................................................................................................................... 3
What splitting method to choose? ............................................................................................................... 4
Automatic Splitting into Multiple Documents .......................................................................................... 5
Case 1.1 “Use separator: Page with Matching Text”: ........................................................................... 5
Case 1.2 “Use separator: Page with Matching Text”: ........................................................................... 6
Case 1.3 “Use separator: Page where Pattern Changes”: .................................................................... 7
Case 1.4 “Use separator: Page Where Text Changes”: ......................................................................... 8
Case 1.5 ”Split By Bookmarks”: ............................................................................................................. 9
Case 1.6 “Split into Equal Size Documents”: ......................................................................................... 9
Case 1.7 “Split by Blank Image Page”: .................................................................................................. 9
Extract pages that contain specific page ranges or text pattern ............................................................ 10
Output Document Naming.......................................................................................................................... 14
Specifying Output Options .......................................................................................................................... 16
Securing Output Documents with Password .............................................................................................. 17
Creating Index Files ..................................................................................................................................... 18
Splitting and Reviewing Results .................................................................................................................. 18
Saving and Loading Processing Settings...................................................................................................... 21
Introduction to Text Patterns ..................................................................................................................... 21
Using Batch Processing ............................................................................................................................... 24
Getting Help ................................................................................................................................................ 25
Legal Notice................................................................................................................................................. 26
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The AutoSplit software requires a full version of Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional for Microsoft
Windows. It will not work with a free Acrobat Reader software that does not allow document editing
and modification. The plug-in supports all versions of Adobe Acrobat starting from version 5. You can
download a free 30 days trial version of AutoSplit from [Link] If you
do not currently own a copy of Adobe Acrobat then you can download a trial version from
[Link] The AutoSplit software, once installed, adds several menus to the
“Plug-ins” menu in Adobe Acrobat. The AutoSplit is available in two versions: Standard and Professional.
It is recommended to download and evaluate Professional version in order to get a complete overview
of the product capabilities.
The AutoSplit software can split the following common types of PDF documents:
• Documents that contain fixed-length sub-documents such as invoices, letters, pay stubs
• Documents that contain variable-length invoices, account statements, letters
• Document that contain bookmarked sub-documents (the first page of each sub-document is
bookmarked)
• Scanned paper documents where each sub-document is separated by a blank page
• Documents that contain pages or ranges of pages with a specific text or pattern
The AutoSplit software can process any kind of PDF document that is at least 2 pages long and does not
have any security access restrictions. If you are planning to split a document by using a text search, then
verify that it actually contains searchable text. You can check that by searching for a known word or by
selecting a text fragment and using Copy/Paste operation to copy it into another text editor.
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Where do I start?
Start Adobe Acrobat application and open a PDF file using “File > Open…” menu.
Next, select “Plug-ins > Split Document…” from the main Acrobat menu to open “Split Document
Settings” dialog:
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The selection of splitting method depends on the document content and on desired results. This
document is going to focus on most common cases of splitting various business documents.
The input PDF document contains multiple sub-documents (for example invoices, account statements
and etc.). The goal is to split a document into multiple documents that contain each statement/invoice
as a separate file and name it using a text from the first page of each document (for example: an
account number, a customer ID or person’s name).
1. Does a first page of each variable length sub-document contain “Page 1 of X” text?
2. Does a first page of each variable length sub-document contain a unique “account number”
(or similar identifier or text pattern)?
3. Does each page of the document contain an “account number” ” (or similar identifier or text
pattern) that is different for each sub-document?
4. Does each page of the document contain an “account number” ” (or similar identifier or text
pattern) that is different for each sub-document AND is always located in the approximately
the same area of the page?
5. Does a first page of each variable length sub-document have a bookmark?
6. The document contains sub-documents that all have a fixed length in pages (for example:
the document is a collection of 1-page long pay stubs or letters).
7. Is there a blank page separator between each sub-document?
IMPORTANT: All “Use Separator” splitting methods require AutoSplit Professional version.
Use Case 2: Extract pages that contain specific page ranges or text pattern
The input PDF document contains pages of interest at specific page numbers (or ranges) or pages with a
certain text or pattern somewhere on the page. The goal is to find and extract all these pages into one
or more documents. The number of output documents is fixed at design time. The user is responsible
for specifying the criteria for pages that need to be extracted into every document.
Select “Use manually defined page ranges” method for all projects that fall under this scenario. This
splitting method is available in both AutoSplit Standard and AutoSplit Professional versions of the
software.
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Case 1.1 “Use separator: Page with Matching Text”: Does a first page of each sub-document
contain Page 1 of X text? Each sub-document may have a different number of pages. If yes, then use
“Use separator: Page with Matching Text” splitting method:
Using “Page 1 of” is the very common method for splitting documents. However, if your document does
not have this kind of page label, then look for text that is only present on the first page of each sub-
document (1 of, Page 1, INVOICE, ACCOUNT STATEMENT and etc). If there is no such unique text
present, then evaluate other more advance splitting methods listed in this manual.
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Case 1.2 “Use separator: Page with Matching Text”: Does a first page of each sub-document
contain a unique “account number” (or similar identifier or text pattern)? Each sub-document may have
a different number of pages. If yes, then use “Use separator: Page with Matching Text” splitting
method:
Press “Options…” button and enter a text pattern to split document at. Here is an example for a 10 digit
account number: \d{10}. Make sure to check “Use regular expressions” option:
The above text pattern will find every page that has a 10-digit number on it and split documents at those
pages. Modify this text pattern to fit your particular requirements or email technical support for
assistance (tech@[Link]) with creating a text pattern that is specific for your document.
Turn on “Combine page range that match the same text into a single output file” option to combine sub-
documents with the same “account number” into a single output file.
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Case 1.3 “Use separator: Page where Pattern Changes”: Does each page of the document contain
an “account number” ” (or similar identifier or text pattern) that is different for each sub-document?
Each sub-document has the same “account number” on all of the pages. If yes, then use “Use separator:
Page where Pattern Changes” splitting method:
Press “Options…” button and enter a text pattern to split document at. The example below checks for
ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXX text pattern (for example: ACCOUNT NUMBER: 92310023). The \d{8}
part of the pattern indicates that it should contain exactly 8 digits.
Some financial documents may contain similar text patterns such as account numbers, customer IDs,
invoice numbers and etc. Turn on “Search for text only inside a specified area on the page” to limit text
search to a specific area. Press “Edit Area…” button to define a working area. Turn on “Combine page
range that match the same text into a single output file” option if it is necessary to combine sub-
documents with the same “account number” into a single output file.
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Case 1.4 “Use separator: Page Where Text Changes”: Does each page of the document contain an
“account number” (or similar identifier or text pattern) that is different for each sub-document AND is
always located in the approximately the same area of the page? If yes, then use “Use separator: Page
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Case 1.5 ”Split By Bookmarks”: Does a first page of each variable length sub-document have a
bookmark? Use “View > Navigational Panels > Bookmarks” menu to open “Bookmarks” panel if it is not
Case 1.6 “Split into Equal Size Documents”: The document contains sub-documents that all have a
fixed length in pages (for example: the document is a collection of 1-page long pay stubs or letters). Use
“Equal size documents” splitting method:
Case 1.7 “Split by Blank Image Page”: Is there a blank page separator between each sub-document?
If yes, the use “Use separator: Blank Image Page”.
This method is designed for separating PDF files created by scanning paper documents. Press
“Options…” button to specify a sample blank page for fine tuning. Select a sample blank page in the
document use “Select page number” entry and press “Set From Page”. This function will set a blank
image threshold based on the amount of noise contained in the selected page.
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The input PDF document contains pages of interest at specific page numbers or pages with a certain text
or pattern somewhere on the page. The goal is to find and extract all these pages into one or more
documents. The number of output documents is fixed at design time. The user is responsible for
specifying the criteria for pages that need to be extracted into every document.
Select “Use manually defined page ranges” method for all projects in this use case scenario.
Press “Add Document…” button to create an output document definition. The “Specify Page Ranges”
dialog will appear on screen to allow initial selection of pages that need to be extracted into this output
document. You can add more page ranges to the same document or to a new document later.
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Use “Specify Page Ranges” dialog to edit (or delete) each page range definition and fine tune additional
parameters. This dialog provides a shortcut for most common cases.
• To specify a page or a page range, enter page numbers separated by commas: 1, 4-8, 22-24.
• To specify a reversed page order swap first/last pages: 5-1, 100-1.
• To specify even or odd pages from a page range add E or D at the end: 1-5E, 1-5D
• To specify a set of pages that contain a specific word or phrase, enter a search text in quotes,
e.g.: “Account Statement”.
• You can specify the same pages multiple times and in any order to create a desired output.
Press “OK” button to close this dialog. You should see a new document added to the output list. Here is
an example of the output document description for 1,2-3,1-6 entry:
Press “Add Output Documents” button again to add another document or press “Add Page Range” or
“Pages By Text Search” buttons to add additional pages to the same document.
Here is an example of the output view after adding “Account Statement” text via “Specify Pages” dialog
as a new document:
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Double-click on any entry in the list to edit its parameters or select entry and press “Edit Page Range…”
button. For example, double-click on All pages 2 to 3 (2 Pages) entry. The “Edit Page Range” dialog will
appear on screen:
Use this dialog to edit starting and ending page numbers, select even/odd pages, reverse page order and
pad this range with a blank page. A custom watermark can be added to every page of this particular
page range. Press “From Bookmark” buttons to get a page number from an existing bookmark.
Double-click on Document 1 entry to edit output document properties. You can either enter a fixed,
custom document name or let the plug-in to assign a document name automatically (based on output
document settings covered later in this manual). You can also specify document properties such as
“Title”, “Author”, “Subject” and “Keywords”.
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Double-clicking on Query Set of Pages Matching “Account Statement” entry will bring up “Extract Pages
by Text Search” dialog where you can edit its parameters:
• Extract a single page that matches the search criteria (the first found page is used)
• Extract set of individual pages matching the search criteria (all found pages are used)
• Extract all page ranges where first and last pages match the search criteria
You can either enter text to search for (for example, Account Statement) or use powerful regular
expression syntax to match a text pattern (for example, a 10 digit account number). A regular
expression, often called a pattern, is an expression that specifies a set of strings and is widely used in
text processing. Refer to AutoSplit manual or to any widely available online resource for syntax details.
Here we are going to provide a short list of commonly used regular expressions as an example:
\d{10} – match a sequence of 10 digits.
\w{5} – match a sequence of 5 digits, letters or underscore.
\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4} – match a Social Security Number (3 digits, dash, 2 digits, dash, 4 digits).
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The AutoSplit plug-in allows constructing output file names by any combination of the different name
parts including extracting specific text from each output document and using it as a part of the filename.
Press “Add…” to start defining an output naming scheme. The following dialog will appear on screen:
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Use “Add…” button repeatedly to add multiple components to the file name. One of the most common
methods is to use text from a specific location on the page:
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Press “Output Options…” button to specify additional processing options that come handy in many
applications:
The “Output Options” dialog will appear on the screen offering a number of useful processing options
such as inserting cover pages or overwriting existing files.
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Check “Secure output documents” option and press “Security Settings” if you want to secure output
documents with a password or restrict document editing.
Select desired security options and enter passwords. Every output document will be secured according
to the specified settings.
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It is often desired to automatically generate a separate text or HTML file that lists every output
document. This can serve as a processing log or as a handy navigation document to quickly open any
output file. Check “Create HTML index file” option to create a number of supplemental index files:
The software will generate the following index files (InputFilename stands for a name of the current
input file):
Once you have specified a desired splitting method and selected output folder and document naming
convention, you are ready to actually run a splitting process. Press “OK” button in the “Split Document
Settings” dialog to start processing:
The actual processing time may vary greatly depending on the size and complexity of the input
document. You should see a progress status in the lower right corner of the current document.
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The “Results” dialog will list all output file names that were created during the processing. If errors were
encountered, then this dialog shows a “View Errors…” button for displaying a list of problems. If
processing was successful, then press “Output Output Folder” button to close this dialog and open an
output folder in Windows Explorer:
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The size of each output document is not directly proportional to the size of the input file divided by
number of pages it actually contains. Most PDF files contain a lot of “shared” resources such as
embedded fonts, background images, navigational elements such as links and bookmarks. This
additional content sometimes may contribute up to 95% of the document size. For example, an input
document has 10 pages with a modest amount of text on each page that use several embedded fonts
and has a size of 1MB. The fonts in this file may contribute up to 900KB of the file size. If this document
is split into 10 separate files, then the size of each output file is going to be roughly the same as the size
of the input document. This is because embedded fonts need to be copied into every output file and
therefore greatly contribute to the output file size. Since each PDF file is unique, the actual results will
vary accordingly.
It is recommended to use “File > Save As…” menu to save a copy of the input document before splitting
to purge all accumulate changes. Adobe Acrobat always appends modifications to the end of the file (if
“File > Save” menu is used to save changes) causing the file to grow over time. Sometimes, this
accumulated change may unnecessary increase the sizes of output files.
If you are puzzled why output files are so large, and then use “Audit Space Usage” function. Open a “PDF
Optimizer” dialog in Adobe Acrobat Professional and press “Audit Space Usage” button:
The “Audit Space Usage” dialog shows how the file size is distributed among various PDF components. In
this particular example, only 4.72% of the file size is actually occupied by visible document content
(text). The biggest contributors are fonts and document overhead.
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Press “Save Profile…” button to save a current document splitting parameters into a settings file (with
APR file extension). You can later restore this exact splitting configuration by using “Load Profile…”
button and selecting a previous saved file. It is possible to transfer settings from one computer to
another using APR files to share a particular processing setup between co-workers.
The most powerful functionality of AutoSplit comes from ability to utilize regular expressions to define
text patterns. A regular expression is a special text string for describing a search pattern. You can think
of regular expressions as wildcards on steroids. Regular expressions are also described in many online
resources, some of which have copious examples. There are many web sites that serve as online
repository of useful regular expressions. The description here is intended as introductory
documentation only. Please consult software help manual for details.
Most characters stand for themselves in a pattern, and match the corresponding characters in the
subject. There are 11 characters that have a special meaning (^ $ . * + ? = | \ / ( ) [ ] { }). As a general
rule, if you want to include any of these punctuation characters literally in a regular expression, you
must precede them with a \. The most common mistake is using a period without a backslash to literally
match a period character. Period without a backslash matches any possible symbol except a newline.
Character types
The regular expression syntax provides a special way to define a character that belongs to a “class” of
characters and use it in the pattern description. Backslash can be used to specify generic character
types:
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Defining Repetitions
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Matching Alternatives
Vertical bar characters are used to separate alternative patterns. For example, the pattern
Invoice|Claim matches either "Invoice" or "Claim". Any number of alternatives may appear, and an
empty alternative is permitted (matching the empty string).
Examples:
(541|503)-\d{3}-\d{4} matches phones numbers that start with either 541 or 503 area codes.
(USA|Canada|EU) matches either US or Canada or EU.
Here is a list of common regular expressions that can be used as a starting point for designing your own
that matches your document or project requirements.
Expression Meaning
\d{10} Matches exactly 10 consecutive digits. For example: 9737739890
ACCOUNT NUMBER: \d+ Matches ACCOUNT NUMBER text that is followed by one or more digits
\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4} Matches US-style phone number. For example: (541)-760-9260.
\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4} Matches US Social Security Number. For example: 507-44-1111
\d{4} \d{4} \d{4} \d{4} Matches a 16 digit account number (4 groups of 4 digits separated with
spaces). For example: 1431 8872 0012 4219
INVOICE \w{5,8} Matches word INVOICE followed by any combination of letters or digits
between 5 and 8 characters long. For example: INVOICE XY87221
CUSTOMER ID: [\w\-]{8,} Matches CUSTOMER ID: followed by any combination of letters, digits or a
dash symbol that is at least 8 character long.
(OR|WA|CA) Matches either OR, WA or CA text strings.
[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0- Matches an email address. For example: [Link]@[Link]
9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}
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The Adobe Acrobat Professional comes with batch processing functionality (called Action Wizard in
Acrobat X and above) that provides a way to combine various document processing steps into multi-step
workflows or “actions”.
You can find visual step-by-step instructions on how to create batch sequences ("actions") online at:
AutoSplit Professional™ plug-in installs a number batch processing commands that can be accessed and
executed via "Batch Sequences" dialog (Acrobat 9 and before) and via "Action Wizard" in Acrobat X, XI,
Acrobat DC:
• "Split Document"
• "Merge Documents"
• "Merge Files From Folders"
• "Merge Files With Similar Names"
• "Merge With Control File"
• "Extract Embedded Files"
These commands may be used alone or inside another batch sequences allowing you to incorporate a
splitting and merging operations into your existing workflow. You need Adobe® Acrobat Professional®
(versions 6, 7, 8, 9, X, XI, DC) in order to have a batch processing available on your system.
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Getting Help
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Legal Notice
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commitment by EverMap Company LLC. EverMap Company LLC assumes no responsibility or liability for
any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in the informational content contained in this guide.
Please remember that existing artwork or images that you may want to include in your project may be
protected under copyright law. The unauthorized incorporation of such material into your new work
could be a violation of the rights of the copyright owner. Please be sure to obtain any permission
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