Bulk printing of pdf files

automatorfinderpdfpreviewprinting

I have 884 copies of a document that have to be printed soon. Each document has a QR identity code on each page, so it is not as simple as print 884 copies of a single document. We are using an canon image runner advanced 6255. The problem is that if I print any one of the documents from preview, it prints correctly. I have set the defaults for the printer using print using last setting, and also set the settings for the driver using the cups browser interface.

If I select several in the finder and use cmd p, the top of the QR code gets clipped off. I tried an automator script using three blocks (get finder specific item [folder] -> get folder contents -> print finder items) prints the QR codes correctly, but for some reason all of the ligatures (fi, …, etc) are dropped leaving blank spaces in the document.
I also tried from the command line using lpr. This produces identical results to automator (QR codes are ok, but all ligatures are missing).

Any ideas on a way to print the documents other than opening each one individually and typing cmd p and Enter?

Thanks.

Best Answer

Since you're saying it prints from Preview correctly, then I'd actually combine all the PDFs into one single PDF and print the one document.

To do this in Preview:

  1. Launch Preview
  2. Navigate to and select all of the PDFs
  3. Go to View > Thumbnails
  4. Click on one of the thumbnails
  5. Use commandA (or just go to Edit > Select All) to select all of them
  6. Now drag all thumbnails onto the first one (you'll see a green plus symbol) and let go of your mouse
  7. The first PDF now becomes a single PDF with 884 pages
  8. Select the first PDF
  9. Now hold the Option key down and go to File > Save As to save your PDF as a different name

Once you've done the above, I would quit Preview and reopen it again, but only to open up your newly combined PDF. Then do a test print, say for pages 1 - 5 to see if it's going to do what you want. If so, then proceed to print the entire document (or perhaps in batches of 50 or 100 pages at a time).

NOTE: If you have trouble combining 884 pages into a single PDF, then maybe create 8 PDFs of 100 odd pages each.

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