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green granite
6th Mar 2009, 17:04
I have several books in HTML format which is a pain to use so I wish to covert them to PDF.
The HTML files are in order 1,2,3.....250, if I select all of them and import them into acrobat they apear in the 1,10, 101,102 ....2,20,200,201 etc.

Any one any ideas how I can get to import them in the correct
order to save a long process of re-ordering the list, other than importing them in small batches.

Jofm5
6th Mar 2009, 23:59
It is all to do with sorting....

If you sort alphabetically (which I imagine acrobat is) you will be sorting numbers as strings... e.g.

1
10
11
12
....
2
20
21
etc..

To get around this problem you need to force the strings to match a numerical sort order which will be to pad out the files with 0's on the left to the length of the largest number.
e.g.

001
002
003
004
..
010
011
012
..
100
101
102

---
If you have a large number of files then it can be time consuming to do manually. I dont mind creating a batch file for you (I can do this quickly) using a textpad macro if you want to provide me with a file of the directory listing.

To create a file of the directory listing open a command prompt. then go to the folder e.g. :-


CD C:\myhtmlfiles

DIR /b *.html > dirlist.txt


The file I would need would be dirlist.txt - if you want me to do it for you please pm me and I will pm you back my email address. Alternatively if you download textpad I can talk you through it in the thread so you can do it for other books you may have - however I will need to see samples of the filenames first so I know what I am working with.

Cheers

green granite
7th Mar 2009, 14:05
Thanks for that solution Jofm5 I down loaded text pad and played with macros but frankly it's actually quicker to import the files into acrobat in 3 lots ie 1 to 9, 10 to 99 and 100 upward. I was hoping someone might know of a box to tick in acrobat to sort the problem as I couldn't find one.

I still find it slightly odd that it should re-order things, after all, all I'm doing is clicking the first file to select it, scrolling down to the last one and shift clicking to select the lot, right click to copy and then right clicking again to paste it into the "add files" box in adobe.