Convert and Merge Multiple Types of Files Together

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Many document workflows involve the ingestion of externally created files from users or the aggregation of documents from multiple sources. In both cases, the starting file formats for these submitted or gathered documents are not always within your control to specify. Some of these documents may not meet your standards or be optimized for your intended use case. You may be concerned with document quality and security and with the challenge of supporting a downstream workflow for multiple file types. Information across files may need to be bundled together for final submission of these documents. Creating a single package of content in a standardized format from multiple original files of different type can be a daunting challenge for any organization. Fortunately, pdfRest has you covered.

pdfRest supports a two-step process for merging files of many different formats together into one, standardized, high-quality PDF document. First, each starting file that is not already a PDF can processed with the Convert to PDF API Tool. This supports a wide range of input file types, including:

Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx)
PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript (.ps, .eps)
JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
BMP (.bmp)
PNG (.png)
HTML (.html)
HTML (from URL)

Once all of the original files are converted to PDF, all of the new PDF files can be merged together with one single call to the Merge PDF API Tool. These operations are chainable right on the processing server, so files do not need to be downloaded and uploaded between steps. Upload and convert input documents, merge those output documents together, and now you're ready to retrieve your one, unified output PDF. With pdfRest's easy REST API format, this workflow is quick to integrate into any application built with nearly any tech stack.

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Whether you're ingesting user-submitted files or collecting documents of from various sources, pdfRest makes it easy to merge together files of different types.

Convert Word to PDF Code Example | Load this into API Lab↗


    curl -X POST "https://api.pdfrest.com/pdf" \ 
        -H "Accept: application/json" \ 
        -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
        -H "Api-Key: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" \
        -F "file=@PATH_TO_FILE/pdfRest.docx" \
        -F "output=pdfRest_word_to_pdf" \ 
        -F "compression=lossless" \ 
        -F "downsample=150" \ 
        -F "tagged_pdf=on" \

Convert JPG to PDF Code Example | Load this into API Lab↗


    curl -X POST "https://api.pdfrest.com/pdf" \ 
        -H "Accept: application/json" \ 
        -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
        -H "Api-Key: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" \
        -F "file=@PATH_TO_FILE/maxresdefault.jpg" \ 
        -F "output=pdfRest_jpg_to_pdf" \

Merge Code Example | Load this into API Lab↗


    curl -X POST "https://api.pdfrest.com/merged-pdf" \ 
        -H "Accept: application/json" \ 
        -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
        -H "Api-Key: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" \
        -F "file=@PATH_TO_FILE/pdfRest_word_to_pdf.pdf" \
        -F "pages[]=all" -F "type[]=file" \
        -F "file=@PATH_TO_FILE/pdfRest_jpg_to_pdf.pdf" \
        -F "pages[]=all" -F "type[]=file" \

Convert to PDF

Merge PDFs