MacOS 12.3 (Monterey) Automator Combine PDF Pages breaks workflows

You can revise my script by removing these two lines:

set msg to "Select multiple PDF using the ⌘-key in the order of your merge preference."
set pdfList to (choose file with prompt msg of type {"com.adobe.pdf"} default location (path to desktop) with multiple selections allowed)

and replacing with:

set dropBox to ((path to home folder as text) & "Dropbox:") as alias
tell application "Finder"
	set pdfList to (every item of folder dropBox whose kind is "PDF document") as alias list
	sort pdfList by name
end tell

This will get a sorted list of the PDF documents in your Dropbox folder and the rest of the script remains as it is to combine those PDFs into the Desktop merged.pdf document.

It now works exactly the way I wanted it to. Maybe even a little faster than the deprecated Automator function 'Combine PDF Pages'. To make the script work, I just had to replace [whose kind is "PDF document"] with [whose name extension is "pdf"].

You saved my life... :-) And you have made me want to go deeper in Applescript to perform other repetitive tasks.

Thank you.

Hi VikingOSX. (Are you Norwegian? If so, I am too...)

I have the same problem with Combine PDF dying because of Python going away, and I really think your script can be my solution too, but I need set the list of known pdf filenames (paths) in my order. (The PDF-files will be in a folder with all kinds of different files...)

I'm not any good in AppleScript, and this is the best I have soo far;

# tilde path to absolute path
set merged_pdf to (NSString's stringWithString:"~/Desktop/merged.pdf")'s stringByStandardizingPath()

# me trying to hardcode the list the 3 PDFs I want to merge. Where the _p1.pdf is page 1
set pdfList to {"~/Desktop/PreAdvise_200436_p1.pdf", "~/Desktop/PreAdvise_200436_a1.pdf", "~/Desktop/PreAdvise_200436_a2.pdf"}


set outurl to NSURL's fileURLWithPath:(POSIX path of (item 1 of pdfList))
set outpdf to PDFDocument's alloc()'s initWithURL:outurl
set pdfList to rest of pdfList
set lastPage to outpdf's pageCount()

but this gives me this error at pageCount:

error "missing value doesn’t understand the “pageCount” message." number -1708 from missing value

So I guess I'm way off in manually setting "pdfList" with my list of paths to get something AppleScripts understands.

If you know how I should format the "set pdfList to"-line to x number of paths to known PDFs - so the rest of your script understand - I would appreciate that very much.

Great. It worked!

Then I was closer that I thought.

Thanks!

*For anybody wandering what the full UNIX path of a file is - as I needed a couple of tries - this is it:

"/Users/<you user shortname>/<folder name>/<filename with extension>"

I was able to make Viking OSX's AppleScript run successfully in an Automator Application with Monterey 12.3.1, but then I noticed what I think is a built-in macOS "Quick Action" that does the same thing. If I select multiple PDF files on my desktop, right click, highlight menu item "Quick Actions" and select "Create PDF", a merged PDF file shows up on my desktop with a name that starts with the first filename I selected plus some additional text. So I'm thinking that there is no need for the Automator "Combine PDF Pages" workflow item to be fixed, or to build a replacement using Automator + AppleScript!

Hello,

You are right: the Quick action can be used in most cases.

However, as far as I am concerned, I use Viking OSX's AppleScript almost daily in an Automator workflow. 'Combine PDFs' comes after other automated processes and is launched in turn in different folders.

So it is very convenient for me to be able to launch all these processes in just one click.

Best Regards.

I purposely built a solution that does not change the original PDF but rather writes the combined PDF documents to a separate named output PDF. That avoids any "accidents" that alter the contents of the first selected PDF, especially if it was not backed up to Time Machine.

The AppleScript editor (Script Editor) is in the /Applications/Utilities folder, or Dock > Launchpad > Other.

There are extra coding considerations when adapting an AppleScript for use in Automator.

Hi VikingOSX, I have used your script to create a working "Combine PDFs" Quick Action, but no matter how I select the source files using Command-Key to select the originals in the correct order, the resultant PDF has pages in the same order as they are sorted in the finder. Please advise if you can.

Regardless of the PATH setting, Python 3.10.* simply does not support Apple's scripting bridge that has been historically supported in the Apple provided Python 2.7.18 until it was removed in macOS 12.3.1.

I switched to Shortcuts which is currently the best replacement for this feature:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1d06d44ffe7a442a9f90d3eb72164b02

How can I return the generated PDF in automator to use the result in a "Move Finder Items" action?

Thanks for this. Where do I select my two pdfs? When I run this currently there appears to be an error.

Select the PDFs in Finder and the choose "Quick Actions" from the context menu and then select the Shortcut