Preview: I can't combine PDF files in SL

If you can't get this working, you could try PDF lab (free), although I am unaware of whether it works in Snow Leopard (works fine for me in Leopard)

P.S. The plural of "mini" is "minis", and if referring to the Mac model it should be capitalised thus: "Minis".

What happens when you try to drag a PDF into Preview in Snow Leopard?

Can someone please confirm whether this is a Snow Leopard issue?

EDIT: Behavior changed.

http://blog.gerrior.com/?p=113

PDF lab doesn't work then? And you can't work out how to edit your signature?

According to the link I added above, this still works, it's just implemented differently.

That's fair enough, but seriously, PDF lab is free and tiny so what do you have to lose by trying it out?


Indeed, but as I said earlier in the thread, the plural of "Mini" (as in Mac Mini) is "Minis", not "mini's"

I believe that he's highlighting the fact that he did mention that Preview can still join PDFs, it's just that the method has changed (see post 3 of this thread). However, the instructions in the blog post he linked to weren't entirely clear to me, but then I don't have Snow Leopard in front of me.

It seems you have two choices:

1.) Work out how Snow Leopard Preview joins PDFs, and teach everyone that.

2.) Find out if PDF lab works in Snow Leopard, and if so, teach everyone that. It's got a fairly intuitive interface and is a bit more powerful than Preview, so may be the best long-term solution.

Yes, thank you. Three times, in fact.

One tries to help. One really does.

Damn!

Hope the developer updates it, because I use it fairly regularly and want to move to 10.6 soonish.

I don't have Snow Leopard, otherwise I would have a look. Sorry. Perhaps a google would turn up clearer instructions.

FWIW, I stopped using PDFLab when it stopped working with Leopard, and it seemed unnecessary at that point anyway.

Works fine for me in 10.5.8.

Maybe it was finally updated, I don't know. All I know is the version I'd been using in Tiger stopped working when I upgraded to Leopard. I looked for a new version for awhile, but eventually gave up -- especially since I no longer needed it.

Pray, how is that relevant to the O.P.?

Try "Combine PDFs" from http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/41822.

If you follow the conversation through, you will see that I was referring to his signature, which has now changed.

Not to be dense but I don't understand the issue. Using Preview in SL, I just opened a multi-page pdf, dragged another multi-page pdf to Preview's sidebar to combine them, rearranged the pages and deleted some pages then save the newly combined pdfs as a single pdf. Prior to saving the pdf, the sidebar reflected the original page numbers from each original pdf (i.e. I had two page 1s, two page 2s, etc.) but the new document was repaginated after the save completed.

As I use this functionality on occasion, is there something of which I need to be aware?

Yes. It worked as expected.

instead of just dragging pdfs into the side bar, you have to drop them on top of a page that's already in the sidebar. (then save as usual).

as described here:

http://blog.gerrior.com/?p=113

not sure why it was changed.. i thought they'd removed that functionality at first, but apparently there's just one extra step involved.

This seems to be a bug and should be reported as such. Combining PDFs helps a lot with scanning documents, etc. and I enjoy using preview for that. *I am still waiting for my up-to-date program DVD to arrive*. But I am apprehensive about having things break when I upgrade to 10.6. Maybe I will wait for 10.6.1.

Preview in Snow Leopard is riddled with new behaviors that at minimum will take a lot of getting used to, and to me seem to be poorly thought out and counterintuitive.

The worst of them is that Command-Delete now no longer deletes the selected page(s) in the thumbnail view, but rather closes the document you are viewing and moves it to the trash. If you have multiple PDF documents open and displayed in the thumbnails panel, then Command-Delete closes them ALL and moves the ALL to the trash. Worse yet, when you go to the trash to retrieve the mistakenly deleted documents, the new "Put Back" command is grayed out and you have to manually put the files back where they came from.

Who ever heard of a keyboard shortcut in an app to close the active document and send it to the trash? Imagine if Word trashed the document you were working on if you hit Command-Delete. I can't understand why they dreamed this up.

So poorly thought out and counter-intuitive, in fact, that it's hard to believe many of the items aren't simply bugs. After having read this entire thread and trying the various fixes here, I still cannot find a way to combine pdfs. It sometimes APPEARS that I have successfully combined them, but after closing and re-opening the file, the combination has not been saved. Did I remember to save? Yes, though, even saving does not seem to work; depending on which thumbnail image you have highlighty, you may not be able to save at all. Click on another thumbnail (in the sidebar of the same doc) and you can save (though, again, what gets saved isn't exactly clear; certainly not the combined file.)

Also, the title bar of the window changes depending on what thumbnail you have highlighted in the sidebar. Seems like a related problem.

Did you try saving a copy with a different name?

I have the same problem. I simply can't use preview to combine pdf files in snow leopard. In leopard, it was just drag an drop and save. In the new version, as I add files to the side bar, the files do not appear to be appended; each file comes as the original file and not as an addition to a "master pdf file."

I have noticed another problem. I used to be able to crop all pages in a document; however, the new version crops page by page. This is a major limitation if you try to identically crop all the pages in one document.

I don't want to do this particularly, but how is it done? Cropping a PDF has always been single page whenever I've done it.

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I am not having a problem with this but I think it might be a procedural problem:

Drag the PDF file that you wish to append into the sidebar and continue to hold down the mouse button, until you see an orange line highlighted in the sidebar. Continue to keep the mouse button depressed while positioning the file to be appended ABOVE the orange line, then release the mouse button; this will cause the file to be appended.

However, if you drag/drop the file BELOW the orange line, it will be treated as a SEPARATE document in the sidebar, similar to a TAB within a browser where you can toggle between the 2 documents for viewing purposes (it is NOT appended, it remains as 2 separate documents).

Not sure what everyone is complaining about? Combining PDFs still works perfectly... although slightly different.

Workflow 1

1) Open a (one) PDF. Now drag and drop from the finder, more PDFs (one or multiple) on top of the thumbnail of the first open PDF. You should see a black "binder" now on the thumbnail.

2) When you hover over the thumbnail, an Icon or badge with an arrow will appear on the right side. Click it, and now your bound document will show all of its pages with a border around it. Click on a thumbnail and drag to re-order, or delete to remove it... or drag it out of the container to remove it from the binder.

3) Now click the arrow again to close the bound document.... and right click and choose, "Save a Copy to Folder" and assorted other goodies.

Workflow 2

1) Use the Open command, and select all of your documents, or drag from the finder all selected on top of the Preview icon in the Dock. They will open as seperate thumbnails. Now drag a selection around 1 or more of the thumbnails, and drag onto the topmost thumbnail. You should see a number in a red circle as well as a plus sign when hovered over the thumbnail.

2) See above for reordering and for saving a copy.

*BTW: I'm not sure if this is new or not, but you can add anything to a "bound" PDF that opens in Preview, including tif, jpg, png, psd, an Illustrater document (if saved with pdf compatibilty preview in Illu)

I must admit though that the way Command + Delete works is not good. You should save your bound PDF first, then delete individual pages afterwards if need be. When combining PDFs without saving first, Preview is technically working on the original documents. That's why deleting will move the original document to the trash.

Anyway was that all that hard and worth calling Apple retarded over, or worth considering old or 3rd party programs for?

PS. May I remind ya'll to "think different" once in awhile. It's the very first words of advise that I tell people when switching from Windows to Mac. I really don't think that I should have to remind Mac users to do the same all of the time. Apple is ALWAYS pushing new ways of doing things. Sometimes they work better.. sometimes not. However, that is the Apple way of innovating and moving forward, rather than stagnating like another major OS provider we all have known to dispise and make fun of here and elsewhere.

Apple as well as everyone makes mistakes, but if you don't TRY... you will never move forward.

I haven't tried this yet (no Snow Leopard) but from the descriptions it sounds like Apple wanted the process of binding to be more explicit. I'm not sure this was necessary, but I'll keep my powder dry until I have a chance to experience this for myself. Either way, it's clear that the functionality hasn't been removed from Preview, and no third-party solutions are needed.

Yes, many times. No luck.

I'm not slamming Apple. I owned an original Mac and have had them ever since.

That said, I think Preview has bugs. Neither of the workflows you outline work for me. Again, they APPEAR to sometimes, but changes are not saved after closing and reopening.

Also, clicking on different thumbnails in the sidebar actually changes the title in the window bar of the same pdf document, as if (as a previous poster said) the thumbnails are not in fact pages in a single pdf but rather more like tabs in a browser. If so, and if that's not a bug, then I'd still like to know how to combine all the thumbnails into a single pdf that always has those pages in that particular order, not simply a browser-like window with a sidebar that holds individual pdf pages or collections of pages (yes, I understand how to expand and collapse the "notebook" style thumbnails).