[Macworld.com]

Need to combine several PDFs into one? Two free utilities are here to help. [more]

[TheBum]

PDFLab looks pretty good and I plan to give it a try. It's also amazing what goodies you can find by going to a software developer's page: CocoaBooklet looks to be equally useful for the way I typically print large documents 2-up to save paper; I guess I missed it when it was covered previously (a search of the Macworld site turned up several references to it).

[nyip11]

And then there's this hint to combine PDFs into a TextEdit document at: http://www.macosxhin...007031004440398

[Nobody]

What about Acrobat Pro?

[TheBum]

Quote:

---

What about Acrobat Pro?

---

Acrobat Pro will certainly do the job, but the point of the article is free utilities. The last time I checked, obtaining Acrobat Pro (legally) required sacrificing a few appendages.

[gpell]

Quote:

---

Unfortunately, neither utility lets you preview individual pages, which would be useful in deciding which to rotate or delete.

---

In Combine PDFs, just double click a page in the list and it shows you a preview of that page.

[mistersquid]

I routinely generate PDFs en masse using Adobe Photoshop. I then combine the resulting PDFs (dozens at a time) using a command line tool called pdftk. The product is free and open source.
Combined with scripts that will rename files sequentially, pdftk can produce PDFs quickly and efficiently.

[Dan Frakes]

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Unfortunately, neither utility lets you preview individual pages, which would be useful in deciding which to rotate or delete.

---

In Combine PDFs, just double click a page in the list and it shows you a preview of that page.

---

Ah, good catch; I thought it was opening the file in Preview, but you're right. I'll update the article.

[fcloon]

What I like about Combine PDF is that you can combine a series of JPGs (not just PDFs) and it will convert and combine them into a single PDF. Pretty quickly too.
Useful unpublicised feature.

[Luke_Macwalker]

You can also use Automator to script the Finder and Preview to combine PDF. It's very easy (no more than 4 or 5 steps) and free too, if you use Mac OS X 10.4, although it does not offer as many options as the software reviewed.
If you're interested in doing it with Automator, here are the modules to use:
1. Ask Finder items [Finder]
Type: Files
Check "Allow multiple selections"
2. Sort Finder items [Finder]
(this is an optional step but convenient to ensure the order of the documents is correct)
By: name
3. Combine the pages of PDF documents [Preview]
Combine the documents by: adding pages
4. Copy Finder items [Finder]
5. Rename a PDF document [Preview]
That's it!
Save it as an application. The, when you want to combine PDF, just open this applet and select the PDF files you want to combine. A PDF file combining the selected files, in alphabetical order, will be produced.

[buldir]

I use PDFtk. Command line, powerful, and very fast.

[web]

That's what I have used too. I've got Acrobat for the heavy lifting, but if you want to do a quick combo of PDFs, the Automator action is handy. But I don't use it as an application. I have it as a contextual menu item. Just select the PDFs and then right click on them. Presto.
I was surprised that it wasn't mentioned in the article. It's free for every Tiger user. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Dan Frakes]

Quote:

---

I was surprised that it wasn't mentioned in the article. It's free for every Tiger user. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

---

Yep, but it doesn't have nearly as many features, you can't control the order of combining (beyond a simply sort), and so on. I'm a big fan of Automator, but these two free solutions offer quite a bit more for the same price as Automator /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Albertr]

For a long time I use something called iMergePDFs.app. You drop your PDF's in the order yoour want them to be in your one PDF that includes all of them and Bang! One PDF. Free! I haven't checked if it is still available. I never looked for an upgrade since it works flawlessly. The only problem with it is that there are no instructions. But it is easy to guess that once you have dropped all your PDF's in you click print. Then under PDF you select save as PDF.