If you’ve gone to combine files in Kofax Power PDF, clicked Add Files, and gotten a Windows file browser pointed at your C: drive while every document you actually want is filed in NetDocuments, you’re not alone. There’s a button in that dialog most people never notice, and it’s the only thing standing between you and your Workspace.
One housekeeping note before the steps: Kofax is now Tungsten Automation, and the product is officially Tungsten Power PDF. Most of the firms I work with still call it Kofax, so you’ll see both names in the wild. I’ll just call it Power PDF from here on.
The Button You Want Is Called Open from DMS
Power PDF doesn’t pop NetDocuments the moment you click Add Files the way Acrobat does. It first shows you the standard Windows file dialog, which includes an Open from DMS button. Click it and NetDocuments opens.
That’s the whole obstacle — one button, sitting in a dialog you’d reasonably assumed was a dead end. It shows up in a few other Power PDF workflows as well; I’ve covered what the NetDocuments integration offers overall separately. This post is just the combined procedure.
The Fix: Use the Open from DMS Button
Step 1: Go to Home → Create → Combine Files
Open Power PDF, click the Home tab, then Create, then Combine Files.
Step 2: Click Add Files
The Combine Files dialog opens empty. Click Add Files, and the Windows file browser appears.
Step 3: Click Open from DMS
This is the step everyone misses. In the Windows dialog, select Open from DMS and click it. NetDocuments opens.
Step 4: Select Your Documents in NetDocuments
Navigate to the Workspace or folder, then select the PDFs you want. Hold Ctrl to grab several at once. They drop straight into the Combine Files list.
Step 5: Put the Files in the Right Order
Drag the documents into the order you want, or use the move buttons. This is the order they’ll appear in the finished PDF, so use your eyeballs before you click go. Tick Add filenames as Bookmarks if you want a navigable table of contents — nobody needs one for a 6-page exhibit set, but whoever opens your 200-page closing binder will thank you.
Step 6: Save the Combined PDF Back to NetDocuments
Once Power PDF builds the file, go to File → Save As and choose NetDocuments. Profile it to the matter as a new document — not as a version of one of the source PDFs. The originals stay intact, and the combined file gets its own Document ID and its own history.
Don’t See Open from DMS?
Two likely reasons.
The first is that the NetDocuments connector was never installed. It isn’t on by default — somebody has to add it, either during setup or afterward through Modify/Repair. I’ve written up how to connect Kofax Power PDF Advanced with NetDocuments if that’s where you are.
The second is that you’re on an older build of Power PDF, where the button genuinely wasn’t there. There’s a workaround that still works on any version:
- Open every PDF you want to combine from NetDocuments, so each one sits in its own Power PDF tab.
- Go to Home → Create → Combine All. Power PDF pulls in everything you have open.
- Order the files and save the result back to NetDocuments the same way as above.
That gets you to the same place. If you find yourself doing it because the button isn’t there, it’s worth asking your IT team to update Power PDF — the current version handles this properly, and you shouldn’t have to work around it.
The Result
Four clicks and you have a single profiled PDF sitting in the right Workspace, with the source documents untouched and nothing saved to anybody’s desktop along the way. The whole trick is knowing that Open from DMS is hiding in the Windows dialog.
Need Help?
If your firm is standardizing on a PDF editor and you’re not sure how well it will play with NetDocuments — or your users are still saving combined PDFs to their desktops because the connector was never installed properly — that’s worth a single call. We can look at how your PDF tools are deployed, what’s actually on your users’ machines, and where the workflow is leaking.
Schedule a free consultation at go.oncehub.com/optconsult.
Craig Bayer is the founder of Optiable and has guided over 550 law firms through NetDocuments implementations since 2010, specializing in firms with 10 to 150 users.
CONNECT WITH CRAIG → https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigbayer/