Comments on: PDF filter

Question: PDF filter

photoslob — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:48:04 -0800

How do I take 5 pdf files and combine them into one file without Acrobat?

I often print, sign and scan contracts and then convert to pdf from the print dialogue on my Mac. Problem is that it's a pain to email individual pdf pages for a single contract.

Is there a way to convert several scanned pdf pages to a single document without dropping the money for Acrobat?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:54:23 -0800

I'm pretty sure you can do this in Preview. Open all five as separate documents, then drag the pages into one single preview window, then save.

By: Steve3

Steve3 — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:54:34 -0800

Combine PDFs does that for free.

By: RichardP

RichardP — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:55:28 -0800

How about the PDFLab? Free, but donations are encouraged.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:18:10 -0800

You don't even need to download a thing, assuming you are running OS 10.4 and you haven't deleted or uninstalled Apple's Automator.

You won't actually use Automator, though, just a little Python program that Apple helpfully gives you (albeit buried in Automator's files -- if I were you, I'd copy it to somewhere more convenient.)

Here's the syntax:
$ python '/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py' -o '/path/to/output.pdf' '/path/to/input1.pdf' '/path/to/input2.pdf'

Personally, I just copied and renamed the original "join.py" file to "PDFjoin.py" and stuck it in a new folder called "bin" inside my user folder (so it can be easily found by typing ~/bin/PDFjoin.py, or just typing ~/bin/P and pressing tab). Then just specify an outfile, and drag the files you want to join, one after the other, into the Terminal window (it will add them to the command as an absolute path), then press enter. The little script will chew through them and spit out your joined file.

So if you do as I recommend, and copy it to a new folder called "bin", you just need to type:

$ ~/bin/PDFjoin.py -o outfile.pdf oneinputfile.pdf anotherone.pdf

(If you add ~/bin to your shell's PATH it's even easier, but that's a separate question.)

Credit for this goes to macoshints.com

By: zardoz

zardoz — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:31:22 -0800

If I recall correctly, simply drag and drop.

By: joeclark

joeclark — Tue, 01 May 2007 05:59:55 -0800

I have, on many occasions, opened multiple documents in Preview and they've become a single document. After trying several methods, many of them nonobvious, I can't reproduce it now.

Kadin's suggestion of essentially programming your own solution illustrates all that is wrong with Macs under OS X. If we wanted to do that, we'd use DOS.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:51:47 -0800

PDFtk works very well for me, though it is a command line tool.