"Flattening" refers to taking the PDF and merging all of the images, text, and fields into a single layer to maximize compatibility and ensure that your documents can be utilized with our previewer tools without issue.

PDFs allow for images and text and text fields to be contained on separate 'layers' within the document, this can occasionally cause issues when using them in other applications, and can introduce complications when using them within Revver.

This guide goes over common ways to flatten PDFs within the Windows operating system.

No Revver specific permissions are required to flatten a PDF. Since this guide is centered on performing the PDF flattening process within Windows, you will need a Windows computer to perform the following steps.

Printing to the Revver printer add-on requires both the Revver Desktop app and the Revver Printer add-on to be installed. If you have not installed those, please see the following guides:

Windows 10 and 11 come pre-installed with a PDF printer named 'Microsoft Print to PDF', giving users a very easy way to transform documents of nearly any type into PDFs. However, this printer can also be used to flatten PDFs.

Open the PDF you wish to flatten in any application that supports it. If you do not have a PDF viewer installed on your computer, PDFs can open in most modern browsers such as Chrome or Firefox.

In most applications you can open the print dialogue by pressing CTRL+P on your keyboard. In Chrome and Firefox, the print option is located in the menu at the top right of the window.

Locate the print option within the application you have the document open in and click on it.

With the print dialogue open in the application, change the selected printer to the 'Microsoft Print to PDF' printer.

When you click on 'Print', a Windows File Explorer window should appear asking you to save the new PDF somewhere on your computer. Choose a location, give the file a name if necessary, and hit save.

You can then open the PDF and compare to the original as necessary.

The Printer add-on we offer as part of the Revver Desktop Apps add-on suite is, at its core, a PDF printer very similar to the Microsoft Print to PDF printer. The major difference is that our printer add-on saves all documents printed to it to Revver, instead of allowing the user to save it to their desktop.

If you have not installed the Revver Desktop app or the associated printer add-on, please see the Requirements section of this article for links on how to do so.

Open the PDF you wish to flatten in any application that supports it. If you do not have a PDF viewer installed on your computer, PDFs can open in most modern browsers such as Chrome or Firefox.

In most applications you can open the print dialogue by pressing CTRL+P on your keyboard. In Chrome and Firefox, the print option is located in the menu at the top right of the window.

Locate the print option within the application you have the document open in and click on it.

With the print dialogue open in the application, change the selected printer to the 'Send to Revver' printer.

Upon clicking 'Print', the document should appear within the upload queue of your Revver Desktop app.

Navigate to a folder or drawer you wish to upload this document to, then click on the upload button.

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