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Ryan700 · Jan 22, 2009, 12:46 PM

I've been downloading a series of articles from the internet and having them "printed to pdf". I'd like to put them altogether into one pdf file. I used to have a program that did that on my PC. It also allowed me to fill in form and resave as a pdf file. Is there a free app that has the same functionality or if not maybe you can steer me in the right direction for something I can buy.

Chuckit · Jan 22, 2009, 01:07 PM

If you have Mac OS X 10.5 or newer, the included Preview application should be able to do this.

AKcrab · Jan 22, 2009, 01:09 PM

Preview.app (if you're running leopard.)

Art Vandelay · Jan 22, 2009, 02:02 PM

Automator if you're on Tiger 10.4

MacNNUK · Jan 22, 2009, 02:34 PM

Originally Posted by Ryan700

I've been downloading a series of articles from the internet and having them "printed to pdf". I'd like to put them altogether into one pdf file. I used to have a program that did that on my PC. It also allowed me to fill in form and resave as a pdf file. Is there a free app that has the same functionality or if not maybe you can steer me in the right direction for something I can buy.

Preview is a doddle.

Open one pdf, drag & drop the other(s)

or there's Apple Widget "PDF+PDF" !!

Big Mac · Jan 22, 2009, 02:37 PM

There's also Combine PDFs which is simple but still works and is free. Or PDF Pen that works well but is somewhat pricey unless you find a deal on it.

Ryan700 · Jan 23, 2009, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by MacNNUK

Preview is a doddle.

Open one pdf, drag & drop the other(s)

or there's Apple Widget "PDF+PDF" !!

Dragging and dropping files in Preview didn't work. The Apple Widget does work but modifying the pdf files before stitching them together has to be done with something else.

Andrej · Jan 23, 2009, 12:02 PM

Why anyone would use something other than "Combine PDFs" is beyond me. That's the only (free) application you'll need to get several PDFs into a single one.

larkost · Jan 23, 2009, 01:26 PM

Originally Posted by Andrej

Why anyone would use something other than "Combine PDFs" is beyond me. That's the only (free) application you'll need to get several PDFs into a single one.

Umm... because Preview.app is already installed on the OS and can handle merging in things other than PDF's? It can also remove or re-order the pages (as is true with most tools that do this).

Big Mac · Jan 23, 2009, 02:00 PM

Preview doesn't work that well for reordering pages in my experience. The last time I tried it (using version 4) I wasn't very satisfied and went back to Combine PDFs. Now I use PDFPen but only because they offered it for a decent price last month. I'll probably still use Combine PDFs for combining more than five pages.

homgran · Jan 23, 2009, 02:05 PM

If you have many pdf files (hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds-of-thousands!) that are numbered sequentially, then the best tool for the job is probably the free (command-line) pdftk. Simply install, open up a Terminal, cd to the directory containing the pdf files and type:

Code:
pdftk *.pdf cat output merged.pdf

to produce the file merged.pdf, which contains the combined pdfs as a single file. Note that the pdftk utility is incredibly flexible and versatile, and can perform operations that are much more sophisticated than simply merging or splitting pdf files.

If you're uncomfortable with the command line, however, you'd probably be better off trying one of the previously-suggested methods instead. Good luck!