I built a flow to generate PDF files, and the output was perfect, but they were too large.
So, I wrote an Azure function that would allow me to optimise the PDFs and it worked well enough that I decided to write a custom connector for it.
There are a few tools out there that already provide these functions but most require a paid plan or sign-up process. I didn’t feel like subscribing to another API, I just wanted a free action that does the job reliably.
So I built it….
Then expanded it into a toolkit
After I had created the optimise action it worked so well that I decided to expand it out a bit with the other actions that I often need.
So it is now a small suite of tools, with a Power Platform connector, and now I am sharing it with anyone that uses Power Platform.
- Completely Free PDF Tools
- No API key required
- Just add it to your Power Automate Flow.
It’s a serverless Azure Function App, fronted by CloudFlare, so it’s reliable, scalable and easy to expose as a connector for Power Automate.
What can the PDF Tools connector do?
Right now, the connector has these actions:
- Extract PDF Info – Get metadata like title/author, page count, whether it’s encrypted, etc.
- Extract Pages – Create a new PDF from a page range (e.g.
1-3,7) - Extract Text – Pull out the text content (optionally page ranges)
- Merge PDFs – Combine multiple PDF files into one
- Optimize PDFs – compress/clean PDFs to reduce size
- Set Metadata – write title/author/keywords and other properties into a PDF
- Split PDF – split by number of pages or specified ranges
I may add more functionality if there is demand and people are finding the connector useful.
Why is it free?
Mostly because I feel like making it free, but also because I feel like some of these things are simple requirements and the product is better for having them available.
So, have a play with it, and please let me know in the comments what you think.
This connector is, and will remain, completely free. If it saves you some time or a premium licence and you’d like to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee. I’m glad it’s useful either way.
robby Atkins says
Hi Paulie, very interested in pdf tools, where do i download it at?
Paulie says
You don’t download it, check out the blog post, you’ll find it in the connector library within Power Automate.
Oliver says
Hi Paulie, it’s great of you to offer this for free. But surely you pay for hosting that function and/or for the resources it uses? So if all of a sudden thousands of people start using this every month, your costs will go up, no? How is that sustainable for you?
I’m asking because having a free “merge PDF” action would be very interesting for us to cut back on the paid connector we currently use. But if making this available for free isn’t sustainable for you in the long run, then it may not be a good idea for an organization to change their flows to make use of your connector. Because you may be forced to start charging for it if more people start using it, which would be completely understandable, but from an organization’s standpoint then that means all of a sudden you have yet another monthly subscription to keep your flows running.
Paulie says
I do pay for the resources that it requires, but I pay very little. A million executions per month would cost me around £5. But my advice to you if you are concerned about it would be to simply run the functions yourself on your own tenant and then you’d have a private tool for use in your own organisation at very little cost. I am freelance and could help you set it up and share the code with you. Please just get in touch if that is something that would be of interest to you, otherwise, enjoy the free version!
Shawn says
This is amazing, thank you for sharing this contribution. The only requests I can think of are short: First, ability insert a new page into a PDF (like to add covert sheet based on HTML). The ability to merge PDFs may already cover this case if used with an action to create the initial PDF first. And second, the ability to add a stamp/watermark to a PDF.
Paulie says
I will look into the watermarking. I think your insert action could be covered by the merge, but could be made more straightforward with a dedicated action. Glad you are finding it useful!
Mr.SJY says
Big thanks for this Paulie!!!
May i just ask if there’s a way on merging pdf files where the content/page(s) of the 2nd file will be inserted on specific page (before or after) of the first file?
Mr.SJY says
Got an issue:
You don’t have a current Power Apps plan. Ask your admin for one, or start a free trial.
Premium APIs used by the app: shared_pdftoolsbytachytelic
Do we have to pay now?
Mr.SJY says
I think I understand the issue.
It still requires Premium license of power automate in order to connect in PowerApps canvas app.
Thanks again for the amazing work!
Mark Pederson says
Paulie,
This is an incredibly valuable and generous contribution to the Power Platform community, for which I’m very grateful!
There is a function that I think would greatly improve the PDF Split connector:
“split pages by file size”
Since flows have such a limited capacity to process larger PDFs, this would be a remarkable addition!
Thank you!
Paulie says
It’s actually a good idea, so you would want it to split whenever it would go over a certain size? like give you back multiple PDFs of a given size? like 5MB or 10MB etc?
Mark Pederson says
Yes—split a file by the number of pages that fit within a certain threshold, like 20MB (since 25 MB is the limit within PA). There’s currently no connector that I’ve found that even does this to my knowledge and I’m not even sure of how it can even be done programmatically with some semblance of efficiency.