merge bookmarking fails if PDF is signed

[conrad.drake]

I'm still trying to properly isolate this problem but it goes something like this:

I am building a dossier of documents, some of which have been signed by Adobe Acrobat.  This seems to cause PDFShellTools some problems: the visible problem is that the bookmarks get screwed up in two ways
a) the bookmarks from the signed document are lost, except for the very last (which is actually related to the first page, which has the signature)
b) the bookmarks for subsequent documents are lost.

Finally,
c) the output file is often not able to be written to.

Still trying to characterise this better, but here is a sample command line.   If I can reproduce this behaviour with non-client files I will add some.

PDFShellTools merge -s -IncludeBookmarks -GroupBookmarks -BookmarkAll "filename=Output.pdf" "S Files\S*.pdf"

[RTT]

I've made some tests and I have a similar problem when, at least, one of the documents being merged is signed and locked ("lock document after signing" option, in the Acrobat sign document dialog), and this lock is the source of the issue. It adds to the document a characteristic not being properly handled by the merge tool. Works fine with signed, but not locked, documents.

Maybe this is the same problem you are experiencing?

[conrad.drake]

I'm sure this is the problem.  I was trying to prove it but you've beaten me to it!

I'm having a little problem splitting without losing bookmarks. Must be doing something wrong?!

Built a mail merge to create multiple bookmarked files of 5 pages, pdf'd it (which has 3 levels of bookmarks), split x5 and lost the bookmarks. Splitting on toplevel bookmarks split in the correct place but lost the bookmarks. What am I doing wrong? (Deleting pages leaves all the bookmarks alone and I need to manually delete "orphaned' bookmarks)

[RTT]

I'm sure this is the problem.  I was trying to prove it but you've beaten me to it!

The fix I have implemented seems to be working, so you should be OK with the next release. Thanks for reporting.

I'm having a little problem splitting without losing bookmarks. Must be doing something wrong?!

That's how the split and delete pages tools work right now. One strips, and the other keeps, all the bookmarks. Btw, Acrobat works the same way.
I need to develop code to reorganize the bookmarks tree, to exclude the orphaned ones, but bookmarks targets are not always pages and the tree nature of the bookmarks structure makes that reorganization tricky in many situations.

[conrad.drake]

Thanks once again!  I'll keep an eye out for the update.

Bookmark management is certainly "fun" , having written a few scripts to try and slice & dice them.