Combining PDFs in Preview is easy (Use Preview to combine PDFs on your Mac - Apple Support) but while the PDF looks correct after inserting the pages, re-opening the PDF shows that the inserted pages are all blank. I've tested with various combinations of PDF files from different sources and it won't work with any PDF file, the feature is completely broken. Does anybody have a way to force it to work?
Acrobat Reader DC is an independent application from Apple's Preview, and produces no Preview conflicts that I have ever encountered in several years of using both, including on Catalina 10.15.3.
Preview is reasonably flexible in handling PDF, though there are some examples that contain PDF syntax that it cannot handle well (or at all), and that is why I keep Acrobat Reader DC current. Some PDF creation tools will even embed XMP requests to run Acrobat plug-ins, which obviously Preview cannot honor.
Until such time as Apple puts teeth in the deprecation of Python, Ruby, and Perl installations on macOS (possibly 10.16 in Fall 2020), one can "borrow" the Python script from within the Automator action Combine PDF Pages. You can run this on the command line (Terminal) after creating a softlink to that location to your home directory:
ln -s /System/Library/Automator/Combine\ PDF\ Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py ./pdfjoin.py
./pdfjoin.py --output ~/Desktop/joined.pdf ./first.pdf ./second.pdf ./nth.pdf
This will not merge specific pages, from a donor PDF, but rather the entire PDF(s) are appended to the first specified PDF, and that result is in the designated output file, not the first PDF in the command sequence.
Thank you all for your replies. The only thing I can think of is I had to install Acrobat Reader recently because Preview didn't support certain Canadian government PDFs. Perhaps Reader is conflicting.
The dozen PDFs I'm trying to combine were all created by different companies so it's unlikely the files are the issue - I've tested different combinations.
I don't have time to debug it right now so I'll just zip the files together. Not as elegant but it will work. Thanks.
Follow the exact process as demonstrated in Apple's Use Preview to combine PDFs on your Mac.
It has been working correctly here too.
There is problably some software conflict.
Try doing this in Safe Mode: is the pdf created correctly?
Try doing this while booted normally and logged in to a new user account: is the pdf created correctly?
Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.
I can't reproduce the problem here. Catalina 10.15.3.
Combine PDFs in Preview results in blank pages
