PDF page extraction

March 28, 2006 11:14 AM

How can I extract every 14th page from a PDF?

Using Adobe Acrobat 7 Pro, I'm hoping to extract every 14th page (beginning with p.4) from a large document. Is there a quick way to do automate this, or is brute force my only option?

posted by piro to computers & internet (5 comments total)

I used something called "pdftools" long ago that had a tool called "pdfsplit" among others (these were command line tools). Doing some google searches, I'm having a hard time finding it, because there are lots of things called "pdftools" and "pdfsplit". However, although this is not it, it looks like it might do what you want.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:23 AM on March 28, 2006

You can also print to the PDF printer you get with Pro... print 4-last page, step 14, in print options.
posted by Malor at 11:43 AM on March 28, 2006

After thinking about that a second more... it may then print 14, 28, 42, and so on, rather than the 4,18,32,46 you want.

If that's the case, print every page from 4 to the end to an intermediate file (this strips out pages 1 through 3). Open the new file, and now print all pages, step 14, and you should get what you need.
posted by Malor at 11:47 AM on March 28, 2006

I think RustyBrooks was thinking of pdftk, which comprises about half of the book PDF Hacks.

As useful as pdftk is, it looks like you'd have to generate the number list yourself (it can only do even and odd).
posted by easyasy3k at 1:15 PM on March 28, 2006

With Rusty's link, I still had to generate the list myself, but it worked spiffily from there.

Thanks, all.
posted by piro at 3:31 PM on March 28, 2006