Turning a multi-author committee report into one polished PDF, over a weekend

The challenge

The client represented a local executive committee that needed to submit a single, properly formatted report, but the content for it was arriving from several different authors, each responsible for their own section and each with very limited Word experience.

With formatting left to whoever happened to be writing each section, headings, spacing, fonts and numbering were all inconsistent from one contribution to the next, with no shared template holding the document together as a whole.

On top of the formatting problem, the finished report needed to be combined with several existing PDF documents into one single, clean file the committee could submit, rather than a bundle of separate Word and PDF attachments.

The job also carried a hard deadline. There was no time for a standard turnaround, the work needed to be completed after hours and over the weekend to get the client's submission in on time.

Our approach

1. 01

   Building a single Master Template

   We built a properly formatted Master Template from scratch, establishing one consistent structure for headings, spacing, numbering and styles that every author's section would ultimately share.

2. 02

   Transferring each author's content

   We worked through each contributor's Word document individually, moving their content into the Master Template and correcting formatting as we went, so the finished report read as one consistent document rather than a patchwork of different authors' styles.

3. 03

   Working after hours and over the weekend

   Given the urgency of the submission, we worked outside standard hours and across the weekend to get the full document set formatted and finalised in time for the client's deadline.

4. 04

   Merging Word and PDF into one file

   With the Master Template finalised, we used Adobe Acrobat to merge it together with the client's several supporting PDF documents into a single file, checking formatting and pagination throughout so the finished PDF was clean and ready to submit.

The outcome

The client's committee report now reads as one consistent, properly formatted document, rather than a set of sections that each looked different depending on who had written them.

Because the work was completed after hours and over the weekend, the client met their submission deadline despite the short turnaround and the number of separate documents involved.

The finished submission is a single, clean PDF combining the Master Template and the client's supporting PDF documents, ready to hand over without any further formatting work on the client's end.