Concatenating PDF pages?

kickahakickaha
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Okay, so now that we have ubiquitous PDF throughout MacOS X, this *should* be simple, but I can't figure out how to do it.



I have several PDF documents, all of a page apiece. I would like to print them out on two-sided paper, which means that they need to be sent to the printer as a single print job. (Manually flipping pages back into the paper tray is a problem - networked departmental printer in constant use.)



I can use Preview in 10.2.2 to pull pages out of a document and save as separate files, but I can't find a way to concatenate them into one document.



Anyone have a quick, easy, cheap way to do this?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Are there really printers that will print both sides of a page without flipping them manually?



    Anyway, I don't know the answer to your question, but you can export from Preview, so you could save them in another format and then put them together in another program, and then either print them out from there or save them back as pdf.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    I know the full version of Acrobat can import pages so you can basically add a bunch of pages into one. I looked around for something that would combine PDFs and this seems like an old page but the program seems like it'd do what you need.



    <a href="http://www.gdykes.com/index.shtml"; target="_blank">http://www.gdykes.com/index.shtml</a>;



    Click on the link to download the full versions. Not sure if the program works in OS 9 or OS X, haven't tried it.
  • Reply 3 of 11
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Er, yeah... just about any networkable printer over $300 will do duplex printing.



    Okay, so it looks like my options are either to manually paste up the PDFs in something like OmniGraffle, or purchase a commercial product. (BTW, Stone Design's PStill for $69 does EPS/PS -&gt; PDF conversion, concatenation of documents, etc, etc and the kitchen sink.)



    BTW, in Preview you can Select All (Cmd-A), then Copy (Cmd-C), and get what *appears* to be an actual PDF data chunklet to paste. At least, when I paste it in OmniGraffle, it seems to be wonderfully resolution independent. So it looks like all the pieces are there... select, copy, paste... we just need an app that takes the pastes and puts them in order.



    Come on, this can't be that hard...
  • Reply 4 of 11
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    The program I put a link to didn't work? Just curious, didn't try it.



    Edit: Just downloaded it and tried it... works in Classic only, it sort of worked... one of the pages in a pdf I tried to add didn't quite generate properly though.



    [ 12-17-2002: Message edited by: MCQ ]</p>
  • Reply 5 of 11
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    Another option... since they're all one page PDFs (I'm assuming standard page size 8.5 x 11"), you could open up AppleWorks 6 and drag each PDF in individually, it'll generate an image of the first page of the PDF then just enter down a couple times if necessary, and drag in the next page. Once you dragged em all in, just print.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Preview and other Apple apps can't combine separate pdfs. I use PStill for that. Have you tried just selecting all the files in the Finder, opening them in one Preview window (this is Preview in Jaguar) and printing? Probably won't work, but maybe worth a shot?
  • Reply 7 of 11
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Thanks everyone for the tidbits, but wow... this is rather lame.



    Ah well. Dragging them into OmniGraffle works, and I can edit/composite/etc to my heart's content.



    Still seems silly.
  • Reply 8 of 11
    neutrino23neutrino23 Posts: 1,562member
    The full version of Adobe Acrobat will do this (not the reader).



    I have been in a similar situation.



    Another one I've looked for is a way to edit the document information (creator, etc.) and to edit the security (set a password, disable various kinds of copy to clipboard).
  • Reply 9 of 11
    redstuffredstuff Posts: 3member
    You appear to be overlooking the obvious choice. iPhoto!



    If all your PDFs are single page, you can import them into iPhoto, create an album just for them, order them anyway you like and them print them. Setting the print output option to full page of course.



    If you have some multipage PDFs and access to Photoshop 7, their is a nifty option if you follow File-Automate-Multi Page PDF to PSD... Open your multipage PDF, save a multiple PSD's then import into iPhoto just like PDFs.



    Hope this helps.
  • Reply 10 of 11
    nibsnibs Posts: 2member
    Kickaha:

    I have several PDF documents, all of a page apiece. I would like to print them out on two-sided paper, which means that they need to be sent to the printer as a single print job.



    neutrino23:

    Another one I've looked for is a way to edit the document information (creator, etc.) and to edit the security (set a password, disable various kinds of copy to clipboard).



    PDFEnhancer can do all of this:



    <a href="http://www.pdfsages.com/enhancer.html"; target="_blank">http://www.pdfsages.com/enhancer.html</a>;



    there's a 10 or 15 day demo so if all you need is a 1-time deal...





    the current version doesn't support puma, just jaguar.



    [ 12-28-2002: Message edited by: nibs ]</p>
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