These pdf editors usually contain the means to modify the pdf metadata but there are cases where other means of editing might be more comfortable or appropriate. One scenario might be the need to edit the pdf metadata using a computer without the appropriate pdf editor, another speed.

Quick PDF Tools (via Life Rocks)is a free computer software that adds entries to the context menu of Windows Explorer. Those entries allow the user to modify pdf documents on the fly. They can be used to edit certain pdf metadata entries in a window right on the Windows desktop. It is possible to edit the title, author, keywords and subject metadata entries.

That is not all however as the software can also be used to add or remove open passwords, edit the initial view, merge selected pdf documents, convert selected images into pdf document format or to remove the bookmarks of the selected pdf documents.

Quick PDF Tools is a pdf editing software program compatible with both the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating system. The download of the program installer has a size of less than 1 Megabyte.

Here is what I normally do with the interesting articles that I download. Once I have them all on my hard drive I use a software to merge them so that I can access them in one pdf document which is much more convenient. The tool that I’m using for this is the excellent PDF SPlit and Merge which is available at Sourceforge.

I was not able to find any limitations so far concerning the amount of pdf files that you can add to be merged. I guess if there is a limitation you can still merge the newly created pdf document and the remaining pdfs that have not been added in first run.

The order of the files can be changed and pages of the documents can be excluded as well. There is one other option to check if at least one of the documents contains a form. The run button merges all selected pdf documents.

A status message is displayed that shows the progress and an error message if something should go wrong. The pdf document that caused the error is marked in the file list so that you can check it or remove it.

Splitting files is a little bit complicated because you obviously have to define how you want to split the document. Options are to split it in single pages, after n pages, after page numbers, or after even or odd pages.

Pdftk runs from the command line which means you should unpack the software into a directory that you can access easily. I put the file into c: for testing purposes along with two pdfs called 123.pdf and 456.pdf.

If you run pdftk without parameters you get a quick output that details the most important parameters. Lets take a look at the possible operations:

Merge pdf files:

pdftk 123.pdf 456.pdf output 123456.pdf

This tells pdftk to merge the two pdf files 123.pdf and 456.pdf into a new pdf called 123456.pdf. If you want to merge more than two pdf files at once you simply add them between pdftk and output. You could also use wildcards to merge many or all pdfs with a certain name.

pdftk *.pdf output 123456.pdf

Split pages from one or more pdfs:

pdftk A=123.pdf B=456.pdf cat A1-2 B4-5 output 1245.pdf

Repair a pdf:

pdftk 123.pdf output 123fixed.pdf

Merge encrypted pdfs:

pdftk A=123.pdf 456.pdf input_pw A=password cat output 123456.pdf

Pdftk offers several more possibilities which are worth a look if you want to do something that I did not describe on this website. A version for Linux and Windows is available.

Read More:

Pdftk Homepage