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User manual — Simple PDF

Browser-based, self-hosted tool to merge PDFs and images, clean scans, and make simple edits (rotate, remove pages, crop, OCR). No client install required beyond a modern browser.

Open the URL your administrator gave you (for Docker Compose defaults: http://localhost:8080).

What it is for

  • Merge PDFs, scanner photos, Word-like documents, Outlook .msg, and text into one PDF
  • Optional grayscale and near-blank page cleanup
  • Edit the result: order, rotate, remove, crop, white-out
  • OCR: make printed scan text searchable
  • Save the PDF where you choose

Accepted files

  • PDF
  • Images: JPG, PNG
  • Outlook mail: MSG
  • Text: TXT, CSV, LOG, MD
  • Office: DOC, DOCX, RTF, ODT

Roughly 50 MB per file by default. Word-like files convert to PDF on upload automatically.

How to use

1) Open the app

Use Chrome, Edge, or Firefox.

2) Add files

Drag files onto the drop zone, or use Choose files. Thumbnails appear per page. Click a thumb for a larger preview. × removes that file (or page, depending on the control).

3) Order

Drag cards to change order. That order becomes the final PDF.

4) Options before generate

  • Grayscale (recommended ON)
  • Cleanup (recommended ON) — drops near-empty pages
  • Detect edges (OFF by default) — for scans with large dark margins

5) Generate

Click Generate PDF. The fullscreen editor opens. If you already generated and did not clear the session, you can Open editor again.

6) Edit (optional)

In the editor you can rotate, delete, reorder, crop, white-out regions, run OCR (page or document), and Split… by page ranges.

7) Save

Download the PDF, or use Save as… when the browser supports the File System Access API.

8) Clear

Use clear/empty session when you are done so temporary files on the server can be removed.

Tips

  • OCR works best on clear printed text; signatures and handwriting usually fail.
  • Large jobs may take longer (OCR timeout is generous by design).
  • If combine says there are no files while thumbnails still show, ask the admin to set a stable PDF_EDITOR_SECRET_KEY (multi-worker session issue).

Privacy

Files are processed on your server. Default cleanup removes old session folders after a configured number of hours. Do not upload secrets to a public instance without authentication and TLS.