topic Re: Merging PDFs without losing Layers (PDF Viewer) in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Merging PDFs without losing Layers (PDF Viewer)

AnaVillaran — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:46:42 GMT

Hi all,

Does anybody know how to merge two PDFs using Python while maintaning layers as shown on the attached picture?

I am using arcpy for ArcGIS Pro to export an 'Overview' PDF and a 'Detailed Location' PDF.

Both PDFs contain the layers once they're opened on PDF viewer. However, when I merge both PDF 'lots' within a single 'Map Book' PDF using 'arcpy.PDFDocumentCreate' and '<pdfDoc>.appendPages', those layers are lost.

I have also tried PdfFileMerger within PyPDF2 Library without success,

Any thoughts?

Thanks, Ana

Re: Merging PDFs without losing Layers (PDF Viewer)

IoanaIstrateCiobanu — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 18:10:31 GMT

Hi! In case anyone else needs it... Use the PDF merger from the Arcmap arcpy. The drawback is that for each PDF you have a list of layers, separately. I don't really like that.

def merge_all(dict_paths, out_dir):
   for empl, pdfs in dict_paths.items():

      out_pdf = os.path.join(out_dir,"{0}.pdf".format(empl))
      # pdfDoc = arcpy.mp.PDFDocumentCreate(out_pdf) #this is for Pro
      pdfDoc = arcpy.mapping.PDFDocumentCreate(out_pdf)
      for pdf in pdfs:
         pdfDoc.appendPages(pdf)
      pdfDoc.updateDocProperties(pdf_open_view= "LAYERS")
      
      pdfDoc.saveAndClose()