Appending a new page to a pdf

First welcome to Apple Discussions!

Let me see if I understand, you're trying to append some pages to an existing PDF document. Yes this is pretty simple.

1. Start Preview (Command Shift and type Preview)
2. Open one of the PDF documents in Preview
3. Open the second PDF document in Preview
4. Move them side by side so you can see both.
5. On both documents go to View, Sidebar and choose Show Sidebar (shortcut is Command Shift D)
6. Drag the page you want in the preview pane to the preview pane of the appended document.

It sounds tough however it's extremely simple to do. No special software needed, it's all built into OS X.

Regards,

Roger

there is no option to do it directly from the print menu. you can do it but it will require a couple of steps. open an existing pdf file in Preview and expand the sidebar. then choose print from the webpage, email or anything else and in the popup choose "Preview". that will open a pdf Preview page for what you are trying to print. select the whole thing in the sidebar, drag it to the already opened pdf file and drop it *on top of it* in its sidebar. this will combine the documents into one pdf which you can then save. you can also combine pdf files using other apps like Acrobat or Graphics converter or by using automator but you'd have to have both those files saved first. the above is the only method I know which will let you append a pdf preview of something without first saving it as a separate pdf file.

Edit: I should have replied to the OP. I didn't mean to reply to rkaufmann87.

I can give you a way to prepend. Maybe the smarter automator people can fix it so it will append.

Start a new Automator Print plugin.
Add an "Ask for Finder Items" action--you could also use a "Get specified finder items" if you always append to the same document.
Add a "Set Value of Variable" action and choose a variable name like "fileName"
Add a "Combine PDF Pages" action and choose Append
Add a "Get Value of Variable" action and select your variable
Add a "Run Shell Script" action and set Pass input "as arguments"
--for the shell script, use

mv "$1" $3"

The workflow first gets the printed PDF, passes it along with the file you selected. It then gets the file names that are passed to it as two items. The first is the temp file created in the print. The second is the file you want to append to. The Combine PDFs will combine the two pdfs into a temp file. This file is passed along and the two saved file names are passed along with the Get Value of Variable action. So, you've got the combined pdf ($1), the printed pdf ($2), and the destination filename ($3). The shell script renames the first argument passed to the name of the third argument passed (mv is move in unix which moves the temp file to the location of the destination file, thus overwriting it or renaming it).

Save the workflow as something like "Append to PDF…" and it will show up in the PDF services menu.

If someone can find a way to swap the order of the files passed to combine, I think it will append. I tried one thing, but it didn't work.

Message was edited by: Barney-15E

hey Barney, this is a great idea! I never noticed that automator has print plugings now that can do that.

I think you can easily modify your workflow to append rather than prepend. just insert the following run shell script action after "ask for finder items":

<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #ADD8E6;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">

echo "$2"
echo "$1"</pre>


this will swap the order of documents.

I think that is what I tried and got an error, but I didn't investigate any further. So, it could have been a typo that I didn't immediately recognize.

Must have been a typo, cuz it works now.

So, to make it append, add a "Do Shell Script" action after "Set value of Variable" and use V.K.'s code with pass input as arguments.

I don't know how to do that. There might be a third-party action that might print to PDF.
Or, if you get the pages manually, then you can print to a PDF service that would take the rendered PDF and combine with a PDF you select from a dialog.

When I move one page to the other (using your method), how can I save the document so that only one exists?