Remove vertical whitespace/page breaks to make one long document

[scottmica]

Hello,

I'm trying to merge an existing 7-page document into one long document. Similar to how the content appears when using the "remove whitespace" view when editing a Word document.

This document will never be printed, and is basically to be viewed as a webpage.

Is there a simple way to do this? I've found several topics regarding the Merge Pages feature, but that seems to just bake in whatever whitespace I'm exporting from Word. Word page setup is limited by my print drivers to certain dimensions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, scottmica

To accomplish something like this would be a two step process. First use the crop pages tool to remove vertical whitespace, as you needed:

image.png

You will likely also want to enable all of the checkboxes:

image(1).png

This will remove the whitespace from all pages, allowing you to combine them without unnecessary gaps in place.
Then you can perform the "merge pages" operation you were trying to do before.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

There are lots of ways to do this and I do it quite a bit.

My preferred way is to show the document, page by page, continuously using the Continuous view setting

image.png

rather than the Single-page view. Then, I apply Guidelines at the tops and bottoms of the desired content by scrolling down the document and inserting Guidelines, either by dragging down from the ruler or pasting previously-saved Guidelines. If the tops and the bottoms are all uniform, sometimes I will use the Add Guidelines tool to insert pre-set Guidelines (often 1" and 9") especially if there are many pages.

Then, I use the Split Pages by Guidelines tool

image(1).png

to chop the pages.

Then, I revert to the Single Pages viewing mode

image(2).png

and delete the unwanted tops and tails in the Thumbnails panel and then merge vertically all the remaining good pages. Or, I will select the wanted content pages and merge them vertically and then delete the tops and tails. The latter is quicker, in my experience, in that, once merged, I select that page, invert the selection and delete all the other pages.

[PHK]

When after getting quite a few views of my post above I don't get any comments, one way or the other, or questions, I begin to wonder if the post was unclear. Therefore, I am attempting to make clear below what I posted above.

First, I am assuming OP was referring to top and bottom page margins when they wrote of "vertical whitespaces/page breaks" although I suppose other interpretations are plausible. My example is a three-page court order that I have redacted but I hope readers will get the drift.

image.png

At this stage, Guidelines are added separating the desired text content from the unwanted top and bottom margins in Continuous viewing mode.

image(1).png

The next stage, changed to Single-page viewing mode, is to split the pages with the one-click Split pages by guidelines tool.

image(2).png

Now, the unwanted top and bottom margins are deleted and the pages are merged.

image(3).png

image(4).png

Another option is to use the Split pages tool to define the splits if those splits do not vary from page to page. The advantage of using Guidelines is that the user can make adjustments to those Guidelines before the actual splits take place, i, e., it is potentially less destructive.

I hope this adds useful clarity to my previous post.

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Your guide is clear enough and quite helpful.

It is possible that scottmica did not see his email notifications.

However, this is helpful for all users. Thanks.