Leopard and Snow Leopard have the ability to edit pdf files, move pages around, and even merge pdf documents together. In OS X combining pdf documents is now easy and you don’t need a third party program to do it! Here is how to join two or more pdf files together into one.
1. Open the first pdf file in Preview.
2. Now select ‘Sidebar’ from the ‘View’ menu – this will make a thumbnail sidebar appear.
3. You can now drag the second pdf file into this sidebar window, and it will be added to your pdf document as an additional page.
NOTE: In Snow Leopard you need to drag the new pdf ON TOP OF the existing pdf’s thumbnails ( a little red box shows you that you are doing this).
This signals that you want to add it to the document. You can then move it to where you like.
If you drag it into the sidebar but not on top of an existing page it will appear as a red line instead of a box and the file will be added as a link, but not merged within the pdf document.
You can now save it!
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The above tip to drag the documents to the preview in the sidebar is the right answer. It creates a PDF binder icon then and the files stay together when you save. Just dragging it in uses preview to ‘view’ all the documents together.
Thanks a million! I thought this would be a real pain but Mac has it built into the system. The brilliance of Apple again. Thank you so much for sharing!
Happy once again that it switched to mac!
I was enjoying this feature and then I had to download adobe reader for business reasons and a nonexistent plugin for my OS, now Sidebar is gone and only Pages exist and I no longer know how to combine documents. Just as I was comfortable now something new does not seem to exist for Adobe reader as in PDF Viewer. Help Please!
Wow….that’s fantastic – converting my thesis to pdf kept separating out pages formatted in landscape from portrait but your instructions made it possible for me to merge it all as one pdf document. THANK YOU!
thanks everyone… i have spent so long on trying to work this out… well until I reached this board.
i am so frustrated! this doesnt seem to work with my computer….and i have snow leopard
Awesome tip, I’m everyday more into Mac… (Just converted)
THANKS!
Thanks for the tip and the clear explanation. I read about this on another site, but the reference was vague.
Here’s a challenge for some brave soul. I am trying to combine PDF text files and am encountering difficulties with the search function once I have saved the new, larger file. Upon putting two pdf’s together, I can search them and there’s no issue. After saving the file however, the search function is lost (or, to be more specific, goes awry: for example, I’ll type in an “m” and it highlights “t”s instead). Why the search function should be lost after saving is a total mystery to me. Any thoughts/suggestions?
In my last point, immediately above, I meant the “Search” function.
Simon, thanks for your comment; didn’t work for me until I did the “insert blank page” as you suggested.
I am using Snow Leopard, and can combine pdf’s to view, but whenever I save and re-open – only the original page will show. I have tried the tips above, once I close it after saving I am lost what I have added.
Thanks!
I am experiencing the same problem as John. I am combining multiple pdf’s all of which are searchable in the Acrobat Reader. After I combine all of the files with Preview, the merged document is no longer searchable. The Acrobat Reader always returns the “no match found” message. Any thoughts?
This does work. If you want to combine multiple images into one document;
1. Open 1st image.
2. Save as PDF
3 Drag 2nd image onto 1st image in drawer.
4 repeat with all images and the save.
Awesome! Almost there…only one problem after combining PDF’s the the first PDF shrank..then if I zoom in on the first one the following PDF’s become oversized! Not sure how to solve the problem. Any help would be much appreciated!! Thanks
Wayne, you’re a genius. Thanks for sharing this tip. I was trying to work this out this afternoon, searched on Google and you were first! Nice work on the search rankings!
Thanks Steve!
I find I can only search and annotate the first part of the document – but not the added sections. Any ideas?
Thank you! This saved me so much time! I learned that I have to be in “thumbnails” view and not “table of contents”.
I have the same problem as Anon. The pdf page I insert is a different “size.” I have to zoom onto the other pdf pages. Any thoughts?
Thanks so much! Appreciate the article
Thanks so much for your help. Mac is definitely a better world !
I added my pdf files to the side bar, but at the end i can;t save it. when i try to save it … there is only “Save As” option and tht saves only single page not the whole document… please help me!
Awesome tip – thanks! I used to use PDFLab to do this but now it crashes every time I try. Don’t need it any more!
Thanks for this tip. You explained it in a very clear way and it worked on the first attempt.
What this really points out, though, is that Preview is a very capable little program that doesn’t get enough credit or use from a huge number of mac users. I’d love to hear more tips for using it.
It sure is!
It also comes in handy to convert between formats. You can open a PDF and then save it as a JPEG or vice versa!
The ability to merge PDF Files built in. It’s good to own a MAC!!
For JOE and others struggling with DIFFERENTLY SIZED pdfs/images needing to be merged……
Use the instructions above to merge/rearrange the files….. then go to PRINT and in the page set up select the correct orientation for your files and select “scale each page to fit paper”…. this will make everything letter size (or whatever paper you have…..
This worked for me to mix a word doc title page, with other random sized photoshop files…..
only works for reducing big files though… haven’t worked out how to increase sizes if necessary….