Many scanners let you choose between scanning one-PDF-per-page or scanning all the pages into one big PDF. The scanner I use does.
However, what happens when you have multiple PDFs that really should go in one document? How do you combine PDFs together?
There are a million ways to do this, including some I have talked about before like using Preview.app to drag and drop pages, and there are lots of applications that one can use to combine PDFs, but I wanted to do something that would be:
- Already built into the OS and not require any additional software.
- Easy to use.
- Repeatable so I only have to set it up once and can use it again and again.
We’re going to use a Mac OS X tool called Automator to set this up. If you have seen my How to Split PDFs tutorial, this is basically the reverse.
Start Automator
In Finder, go to Applications and then start Automator.
Choose Service
In the window that pops up, highlight Service and then hit Choose.
Set The Variable For The Original PDFs
At the top of the window at the right, change the Service receives selected dropdown to PDF files. I set the in dropdown to Finder.app. I haven’t tested it in other applications.
Now in the Library section on the left, click on Utilities and then find Set Value of Variable. Drag it to the main window on the right.
In the Variable dropdown, choose New variable… and call it originalPDFs.
Here’s what the first rule looks like so far.
Set The Variable For The Path Of The PDF
We are doing this step because of a weird way Automator works. It doesn’t make it easy to save the resulting PDF to the same folder as the original.
I could prompt the user to choose a path, but I wanted to make it automatic so we have to get a bit geeky.
Note: if you’re an Automator expert and know a better way to do this, please leave a comment!
Still in the Utilities section of the Library on the left, find Run AppleScript. Drag it to the main window under our last step.
In the Run AppleScript window, paste in this code:
on run {input, parameters}
set pathList to {}
repeat with itemNum from 1 to count of input
tell application "System Events"
copy POSIX path of (container of (item itemNum of input)) to end of pathList
end tell
end repeat
return pathList
end run
(Basically that is going through the PDFs that you are splitting and copying the folders that they are stored in.)
Now in the Utilities section of the Library, find our old friend Set Value of Variable and (you guessed it) drag it into the main window under our last step.
In the Variable dropdown, choose New Variable… and give your new variable a name of containerPath.
Here’s what these steps look like:
Combine The PDFs
Now it’s time to do the combining!
First, we want to get the list of PDFs that we had saved back in the first step.
In Library -> Utilities, drag Get Value of Variable to the main window under our last step.
In the Variable dropdown, choose originalPDFs.
Right under the Variable dropdown there is an Options button. Hit that and check Ignore this action’s input.
Now in Library on the right, choose PDFs. Find Combine PDF Pages and drag it under the last step.
Next, in Library on the right, choose Files & Folders. Find Rename Finder Items and drag it under the last step. It will pop up a message asking you if you want to preserve an extra copy. We don’t need that, so hit Don’t Add.
In the Rename Finder Items box, change the dropdown to Name Single Item. Then hit the Options button and check Show this action when the workflow runs. This will let name the new PDF.
Next, also in Files & Folders, drag Move Finder Items under the last step. In the Variable window at the bottom of your screen, find your containerPath variable. Drag it up on top of the To dropdown.
Here is what those last steps look like:
Save The Service
Alright! You’re done! Here’s the entire rule (click to see it bigger):
Go to File > Save and give your new service a name. I’ll call mine Combine PDFs.
Use The Combine PDFs Service
You have just created a Service. This means that if you right-click a group of PDFs in the Finder, you can combine them right from there. Let’s try it.
Find a group of PDFs on your Mac, highlight them, and right-click. Choose the Services menu near the bottom. If all went well, you should see Combine PDFs (or whatever you called your Service) in the list. Choose it.
It will think for a moment and then pop up a box where you can give the new PDF a name. I just called mine “Combined”.
Boom. I now have a PDF called Combined.pdf that contains all the selected PDFs.
Best of all, since I went through this trouble to set it up as a Service, going forward whenever I need to combine PDFs, I just have to right-click on them.
Downloading The Service
If you don’t want to go through the hassle of setting this all up, you are welcome to use mine.
To use it, download the file to your computer and double-click it to Unzip it.
You want to move the file to the ~/Library/Services folder. It’s probably hidden for you, so the easiest way to get there is:
- Go to a Finder window
- Choose the Go menu and then Go to Folder…
- Type or paste in ~/Library/Services
Once that window opens up, drag the CombinePDF.workflow file there.
Click Here To Download CombinePDF20.zip
This article was originally written in August 2010. It was updated in September 2015 for OS X Yosemite and to improve the workflow.
