Chain PDF tools into one workflow
A workflow is a saved, ordered chain of tools — merge, then compress, then number the pages — run as a single job instead of three separate ones. It is worth building when you do the same sequence more than once, or when a step hands back more files than you want to carry through the next tool by hand, such as a split into eight parts.
A step that cannot take what the previous step produced fails the whole run and says which step — it does not skip ahead quietly.
Saved workflows
Saving needs an account — the builder below works fully without one, for a one-off run. Sign in to save, name and reuse a workflow.
Loading the tool catalogue…
How it works
- Add the steps. Pick tools from the catalogue in the order the file should move through them — merge, then compress, then number the pages, say. Two to eight steps.
- Set each step’s options. Every step’s controls are the same form that tool’s own page uses, published by the server, so a step never offers an option the tool does not actually run.
- Upload once and run. Add the starting file or files. The first step’s output becomes the second step’s input, and so on — the last step’s output is what you download, and a summary shows what each step actually did.
What a workflow does not do
- A workflow is two to eight steps. One step is a single tool run on its own page; nine steps is someone building a program — for that many passes, run the tools one at a time instead.
- A step that gets too few input files, or a file of the wrong kind (a .txt where a step needs a PDF), fails the whole run and says which step and why. It never skips a step and carries on with what is left.
- Only the final output is kept. Whatever a step produces along the way exists only for the run and is discarded the moment it finishes — nothing in between is stored.
- Saving a workflow needs an account, and each account can keep up to 50. Building and running one does not: an anonymous run works exactly the same, it just is not remembered afterwards.
- It does not do anything a single tool could not already do from its own page. What it saves is the download-and-re-upload between steps, and it shows you what each one produced.
What happens to your file
Files are uploaded once, before the first step runs, because every step runs on our server rather than in the browser tab. They are kept for at most 2 hours and the results you download for 24 hours, then a scheduled job deletes both — a job has to be able to read the file while it runs, and you have to be able to retry a failed conversion without re-uploading. Neither needs longer. Only the final output is ever stored: what a step produces for the next step to consume lives in memory for the run and is gone when it ends.
Nothing about the contents is logged, and no one reads your documents. The retention page lists the same numbers the code enforces, and the privacy policy says who can reach the storage they sit in.
Questions
- What happens when one step produces more files than the next step can take?
- The next step runs once per file and the results are joined in order — split a file into eight parts, then run a page-numbering step, and it stamps all eight rather than failing on the first one. That only works when the receiving step accepts a single file at a time; a step that needs at least two inputs cannot be fanned out that way, and the run fails naming the step rather than guessing what you meant.
- Do I need an account?
- No — building and running a workflow works the same either way. An account is only for saving one so you can load it again later, up to 50 per account.
- Does reordering a step lose the options I set for it?
- No. Reordering only changes the sequence the steps run in; each step’s options travel with it.
- What do I get back?
- The last step’s output files, each with its own download link, plus every note the tools along the way produced and a line-by-line summary of what each step actually ran on how many files.