Assembling a long document: order, pages and numbering

Putting a tender, a project report or an application together from separate files goes wrong in a predictable way: people compress or number the parts first, then merge, and then have to undo both. A little order saves the repetition.

Decide the reading order before anything else, and get the parts into it. Cover first, contents next, appendices last. Our merge tool lets you drag the files into position before joining them, which is easier than reshuffling pages afterwards.

Then remove what is not wanted, while the document is still in pieces and it is obvious which page belongs to what. After that, merge. Only once you have a single document should you add page numbers, because numbering before merging gives you several sequences that all start at one. If a section is already numbered in the original, number the range that is not, rather than stamping the whole file.

Compression comes last, for two reasons. The merged file is the one that has to meet the size limit, and compressing the parts separately then merging loses quality in each part for a worse result overall. One pass at the end, on the finished document, does better.