Scanning additional pages to an existing PDF file

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Greetings –

I just bought an HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus (Model N911g) Printer/Scanner/Fax. The old Canon MP470 finally bit the dust. With Canon’s MP Navigator I was able to add pages to a pre-existing pdf file–great for (among other things) adding new pages to a document where I kept all of my vehicle’s service information. The HP doesn’t seem to have that capability, which I find hard to believe. I suspect that I just don’t know how to do it. I can’t find anything on the WEB, so I thought I’d turn to the folks who know what they’re doing–you guys. I’d surely appreciate it, if anyone can point me down a proper path. Thanks.

Casey H.

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I think the ability to append to pdfs is still more the exception rather than the norm, so I don’t think it’s all that hard to believe the HP software doesn’t support that feature.

I don’t know if this would work, but if the Canon software is still installed you might try using its scanner software with the HP. When you launch the scanner software, look through the menus to see if you have the option of choosing the twain source. The purpose of twain is to standardize the scanner interfaces, so you should be able to tell the Canon software to use the HP twain driver instead of the Canon twain driver. (I’m assuming you already installed the HP driver.)

If that doesn’t work, you can always install the freeware Bullzip PDF printer. It’s like most pdf printers in that you “print” to the Bullzip printer instead of a regular printer, except it allows you to append to an existing pdf. This is probably not as convenient as the Canon approach because it would involve more steps: first create a pdf with the HP software, then open the pdf in a pdf reader and reprint it from there via Bullzip.

Dan

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Thanks, I’ll give it a try. I actually renoved the Canon driver prior to installing the HP–fearful of a conflict and figuring there would not be a need for it.

Casey

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Thanks again for the advice, but I’ve decided to go with Plan B. Alt+i+p+s brings up a scan dialogue in Office 2010. I’ll just consolodate everything into a WORD document. The file size is smaller, too.

Casey

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I’m not familiar with the Bullzip PDF printer, but it appears to serve the same purpose as PDFCreator from Sourceforge, which I use on a regular basis, and find very effective if not entirely intuitive. The latter is under the GNU General Public License, whereas the Bullzip licence is described as “FREEWARE with limitations”, and therefore PDFCreator may be more suitable in some cases.

One issue I have found with PDFCreator, that probably also applies to the Bullzip PDF printer, when mixing scanned documents and those printed direct from other applications is a page size problem. Most PDF display software gives the default printer scaling as “Fit to printer margins” or similar wording. This needs to be switched to “None” before printing the scanned documents to a PDF, otherwise the scanned pages are smaller than the directly printed pages.

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Hi Guys!
I always use the free PrimoPDF when I want to add pages to an existing PDF file. Several options and it works great. There are a few small advertisements that show in the application but never intrusive.

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You can try Adolix Split and Merge. It’s free for documents up to 50 pages and allows you to add pages anywhere in an existing file as well as splitting existing pdf files in to smaller files by page. Works very well for me using Win7 x64.

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I like to use PDF Tools, a free program that allows one to join or split pdf files. If I need to join more pages to an existing file, I create the PDF file and then use PDF Tools to join them. Works great and no watermarks. I ahve also used PDF Fill for the same functions. It comes free and has numerosu more features as well.

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PDF Split and Merge http://pdfsam.org/ does a nice job, allowing you to add, remove, and even rearrange pages in a PDF file. I find its user interface rather confusing, but once you get that sorted out it works well.

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Thanks to all. I didn’t even think to ask about this, but I will be checking out the options, which I expect will be very useful to me.

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