• Overview
• CUE standard
• CUE template
• Implementation advice
• Web writing guide

• Creating PDFs
  • Accessibility issues
  • Size of PDF files
  • Splitting large PDFs
  • Linking to PDFs
  • Creating PDFs (using Distiller)
  • Metadata ('summary data')
  • PDF file names
  • Document security
  • Open options
• PDF publishing principles
• Checklist

Creating PDFs

Splitting large PDF files into multi-file documents

If you have taken the steps suggested in Size of PDF files and your PDF remains larger than 200kB, split the file into smaller, linked PDFs.

Splitting large PDFs reduces file sizes to manageable 'chunks', but it can also result in reduced usability.

Software is available

Software is available that will automatically split a single (large) PDF into smaller, multi-part, inter-linking PDFs. See Arts PDF (non Queensland Government site).

Before you start splitting a PDF

Because splitting a PDF file is a time-consuming process, you can save a lot of time by ensuring your PDF is appropriately compressed and is as small as possible.

The PDF file may not be 'optimised' if you (or a previous owner) have been editing the PDF in Acrobat. Try 'Save as' - as this will re-optimise the file and then check whether the file size is smaller.

Steps involved in splitting a PDF

1. Create a technically correct, web-ready PDF.
2. Delete all thumbnails.
3. Add metadata (aka PDF summary data).
4. Split the PDF into files smaller than 200kB.
5. Add bookmarks in the complete (pre-split) PDF that link to the split PDFs.
6. Re-split the complete PDF exactly as you did in step 4.
7. Edit metadata in each file, and set 'open options'.

Splitting PDFs can reduce usability

While splitting large PDFs into smaller, more manageable parts increases accessibility, it can also reduce usability-for example:

• anyone wanting to print the document, will have to download all of the smaller parts and print them individually
• if a web browser is not configured to view PDF files inline (using the Acrobat plug-in), the bookmarked links between the multi-part PDF document will not work.

Making your complete PDF as small as possible, will help to reduce the number of parts it will need to be split into, while reducing the number of parts will make the whole document easier to use.

See also: 'Linking to multi-part PDFs'

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