PDFTK Builder Enhanced

Latest Version: 4.1.8
Date: 06 May 2025
Platform: Windows 32-bit application
Website: pdftk-builder-enhanced.sourceforge.io
Developers: David King, Angus Johnson
Compiler: Delphi 12.1
License: GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3
Dependencies: PDFtk Server v2.02; installed PDF viewer

Description

This project provides a free and open-source (FOSS) graphical user interface (GUI) for the Windows version of the popular PDF ToolKit (PDFtk) command line tool, PDFtk Server by Sid Steward.

Screenshots of the program are available on the project's Summary page on SourceForge.net and on the program's informational website.

The program can be downloaded from the project's Files page on SourceForge.net and from PortableApps.com.

For a PDFtk GUI focused on creating and modifying PDF bookmarks, see the companion application on SourceForge, PDFtk Bookmarks Editor.

Functions

The combination of this enhanced version of PDFTK Builder and the latest version of PDFtk Server provides a free, easy-to-use tool that can:

• Rotate, reorder, extract, delete or insert pages in a PDF document
• Merge PDF files or interleave PDF page scans
• Split a PDF file into files of N pages or odd/even pages
• Fill PDF forms or flatten forms
• Apply background watermarks or foreground stamps
• Apply page numbers and text to page headers/footers
• Report and add/update PDF bookmarks and metadata
• Attach files to PDF documents; extract PDF attachments
• Decrypt (password required) or secure PDF documents
• Uncompress and re-compress page streams
• Repair corrupted PDF (where possible)
• Launch other PDF tools to augment program capabilities

Enhanced Features

This project is a fork of PDFTK Builder by Angus Johnson to:

(1) enhance the user interface,

• Drag and drop support for input file(s) now available on all tab sheets
• 'View' buttons added on all tab sheets to allow user to display input and output PDF files
• New file name only display mode and 'Pages' indicator column added to Join Files' list
• 'Join Files' list enlarged, context menu added, need for horizontal scrolling eliminated
• Other tab sheets can now use the 'Join Files' list as a source of their PDF files
• Buttons added to reset input files, pipe output PDF, and locate output PDF in its destination folder
• Help menu expanded with accesss to new User Guide, PDFtk Server Reference Manual, and configuration file

(2) expand supported PDF functions,

• Additional options now available for page numbering, multistamping, and file splitting
• New 'Tool Sets' tab sheet adds PDFtk tools for attaching files and modifying metadata, bookmarks, and forms
• External PDF tools can now be launched from within PDFTK Builder to supplement its capabilities
• Text comparison of two PDF files can now be performed via new 'Compare' tool using external diff tool
• New 'Advanced' tool allows expert users to directly formulate PDFtk commands not otherwise possible via the GUI

(3) enable use of later versions of PDFtk (pdftk.exe).

• PDFtk Server v2.02, Jul 2013 replaces v1.41, Nov 2006 for access to later bugfixes and enhancements

Getting Started

This project is distributed as a portable 32-bit application for Windows and is licensed under terms of the GNU GPL, version 3.

Two downloads are available:

(1) Executables and User Documentation (includes PDFtk Server v2.02)
PdftkBuilder-4.1.8-portable.zip (6.6 MB)

(2) Source code (Delphi 12.1)
PdftkBuilder-4.1.8-source.zip (71.5 KB)

Download PdftkBuilder-4.1.8-portable.zip and extract it to a folder of your choice. See files instructions.txt and PdftkBuilder.ini in the folder for some configuration options for the program. Launch PDFTK Builder by double-clicking its .exe file (PdftkBuilder.exe). Note that the .exe file is not code signed so Windows will flag it as risky the first time it is launched.

To use the program, (1) select the tab for the desired operation (e.g., 'Join Files', 'Rotate Pages'), (2) drag-and-drop the input PDF file(s) onto the tab sheet from Windows Explorer and enter the affected pages ranges (default = all pages), and (3) click the 'Build' button at the bottom of the form.

PDFTK Builder Portable is also available for download from PortableApps.com in the form of a PortableApps.com format installer file (.paf.exe).

Documentation

The distribution includes documentation for both PDFTK Builder and PDFtk Server. For an overview of the program, see the PDFTK Builder Help file. For more detail, see the PDFTK Builder User Guide. The Help file (.html), User Guide (.pdf), PDFtk Server Reference Manual (.pdf), and configuration file (.ini) are all accessible from the Help menu of the program.

Acknowledgements

• Steward & Lee, LLC (for GPL PDFtk Server executable and documentation included in the distribution)
• Angus Johnson (for design and code of GPL PDFTK Builder Version 3 used as the basis of this project)
• Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. (for free license of Delphi 12.1 Community Edition used for this FOSS project)

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Version History

4.1.8, 06 May 2025

• Bugfixes: (1) Fixed an issue with the ‘Advanced’ tool of Tool Set 4 where PDFtk ‘multibackground’ and ‘multistamp’ operations were ignored when manually formulating the PDFtk commands using Template #4 (T4). Please note that the recommended method for applying multi-page backgrounds and stamps is to use the background and stamp options on the ‘Mark Pages’ tab. (2) When the program is exited, it now deletes its temp folder (%LocalAppData%\Temp\pdftkb) rather than leaving the folder empty.

4.1.7, 02 Dec 2024

• Bugfix: Fixed an issue with Join Files where pages may be taken from the wrong file when merging or interleaving the pages of multiple PDF documents. This issue affected files below the top file in the Join Files list that had more than one page range entered in their Pages box. For those files, the first page range would be taken from the correct file, but any additional page ranges would be taken from the top file. (Workaround for releases prior to 4.1.7 is to repeat the affected files multiple times in the Join Files list specifying only one of their multiple page ranges each time.)

4.1.6, 28 May 2021

• Added: After a password has been set and the panel is closed, the caption on the Document Protection panel button will now be displayed in red to indicate that encryption of output PDFs is in effect.

4.1.5, 13 Oct 2019

• Bugfix: Fixed user interface issue where those tools on the ‘Tool Sets’ tab that do not output PDF files (e.g., ‘Dump Data’) were erroneously enabling or affecting the ‘View’, ‘Locate’ and ‘Pipe’ output buttons.
• Added (2 Nov 2019): File libiconv2.dll added to download file PdftkBuilder-4.1.5-portable.zip. This GNU Win32 dll is used by pdftk.exe to convert between character encodings in international environments. No changes made to PDFtk Builder 4.1.5 executable.

4.1.4, 18 Sep 2019

• Added: 'Split File' tab now supports producing output PDF files in chunks of N pages. Default output is individual page files (N=1).

4.1.3, 13 Sep 2019

• Added: 'Rotate Pages' tab now supports entry of a list of page ranges for rotate, extract and delete options when PdftkVersion >= 2.00 (default). For PdftkVersion < 2.00, pages entry remains a single page range with separate edit boxes for the start and end pages.

4.1.2, 28 Jul 2019

• Initial public release.
• Added: (1) Options on 'Rotate Pages' tab to delete and extract the range of pages; (2) PDFtk Server manual to Help menu.
• Update: (1) 'Shuffle' option renamed 'Interleave' on 'Join Files' tab; (2) 'Del' key added as hotkey to 'Remove' file in 'Join Files' list (when focus not on 'Pages' edit box); (3) .html and .pdf files relocated to 'docs' subfolder; (4) Ctrl-J, -S, -M, -R, -T, -P hotkeys for switching tabs, etc. restored without restoring 'View' menu deleted in v4.0.0.

4.1.1, 26 Oct 2018

• Added: Page rotations can now be made compatible with PDFtk versions < 2.00 by setting PDFtk version in the .ini file.

4.1.0, 17 Jul 2018

• Added: (1) Drag and drop support for source and secondary input files on other 4 tab sheets; (2) context menu (right-click) with items to extract pages from selected file, open file location, display file properties; (3) double click to view the selected source PDF file in the 'Join Files' list; (4) additional page numbering options, including left and center positions, page range, starting number, and prefix/suffix text with text placeholders; (5) 'Uncompress' and 'Compress' operations to 'Tool Sets'; (6) dual input PDF file capability to 'Launch' action; (7) 'Compare' action to use external PDF text compare tool, such as WinMerge; (8) 'Odd/Even' option to 'Split File'; (9) Help menu items to view/edit .ini file and view User Guide (.pdf).
• Update: Incorporated following cosmetic changes from v3.9.6, Mar 2018: (1) save and restore last closed position of main form, (2) preserve top position of main form when opening/closing document protection panel, (3) add arrow button for opening/closing document protection panel.
• Bugfix: Retrofitted applicable bugfixes from v3.9.6, Mar 2018 through v3.10.0, Jul 2018.

4.0.0, 28 Nov 2017

• Initial enhanced version of PDFTK Builder (based on v3.9.4, Apr 2015).
• Added: (1) 'Shuffle' option to 'Join Files'; (2) file name only display mode, second column for P (pages) and T (truncated file name) indicators, and increased size of grid to display more rows and longer file names in 'Join Files' list; (3) capability to use 'Join File' list as sequential source for other tab sheets; (4) Alt-Shift-S, -M, -R, -T keys to 'Join Files' tab sheet to forward selected source document to another tab sheet; (5) capability to manually copy and paste input file names through the clipboard; (6) labels to display input file names and page counts on Split, Mark Pages, Rotate Pages and Tools tabs; (7) edit boxes to specify page range and button to change output folder to 'Split File' tab sheet; (8) 'multibackground' / 'multistamp' capability (automatically used for background/stamp files with multiple pages); (9) options for position, mirroring, and page orientation for page numbers; (10) 'Misc Tools' tab sheet with 12 new functions; (11) 'View', 'Locate' and 'Pipe' buttons to output panel; (12) page count and file size to status bar message and copy of file path to clipboard when output file saved.
• Update: (1) Replaced PDFtk v1.41, Nov 2006 with PDFtk Server v2.02, Jul 2013; (2) incorporated revised rotation syntax from PDFtk v1.45; (3) dropped 'View' menu and use of Ctrl key for switching tab sheets; (4) replaced use of ctrl-A for selecting all items in Join Files list with 'Reset' button; (5) changed opening position of window from desktop center to screen center to fix main form from spanning dual monitors.
• Bugfix: Removed extraneous auto re-sorting of source PDF list after file added via drag and drop (error in v3.9.4, Apr 2015; fixed in v3.9.7, Mar 2018).