How can I combine two PDFs in Preview?

First, you can only merge pdf if they are not protected, if this is the okay :

  1. Open both pdf
  2. Enable the sidebar in each windows of Preview, then select "Thumbnails" view
  3. Drag & drop the cover (inside the sidebar) of one pdf into the sidebar of the other pdf.

With this method, you can completely merge two pdf or selectively drag & drop the pages you want to merge to create a completely custom new pdf.

You can also extract pages from one pdf still using the same manipulation, but drag & drop to the Desktop.

answered Aug 29, 2010 at 1:09 8,847 5 5 gold badges 39 39 silver badges 38 38 bronze badges

With "Toggle the sidebar" you probably meant "Enable the sidebar" or something like that (i.e., make it visible).

Commented Aug 29, 2010 at 11:19 @Jonik : Yeas, of course. I changed it. Commented Aug 29, 2010 at 19:01 Very nice! I've always used a java-based "PDF Split & Merge" utility, but this sounds easier. Commented Aug 30, 2010 at 5:52 Wow, awesome tip. Didn't realise you could do this. Fab. Commented Aug 31, 2010 at 19:42

I know you asked for 'Preview' solutions, but in case you're interested in a command-line tool:

alias pdfjoin='/System/Library/Automator/Combine\ PDF\ Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py'

Then you can do things like

pdfjoin -o out.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf .
answered Sep 1, 2010 at 5:21 Larry Gritz Larry Gritz 223 1 1 silver badge 8 8 bronze badges

Here's a detailed explanation of how to use Automator. It looks complicated but it only took me a couple of minutes to reproduce it on my computer.

answered Dec 13, 2010 at 5:09 chris chris

Another way is with Automator. You can combine many pages into one PDF with that. It has a "Combine PDF Pages" action.

answered Aug 31, 2010 at 16:36 Graham Perks Graham Perks

Pretty sure the easiest is to open all jpgs or images in Preview, then go to Print, and instead of actually printing, save as a PDF. Boom. All images in one PDF.

answered Sep 10, 2014 at 23:04 curtneedsaride curtneedsaride

I do this all the time (I print my expense report to PDF and then have to insert all the scanned receipts and other PDF receipts into that document). The easiest way I have found is to open the target PDF in "Contact Sheet" view and then from Finder you can drag and drop the files into the Preview window of the target file. This makes very quick work of assembling multiple PDFs into a single document