My PDF documents won't merge

I had this same problem, using OS X Lion and Preview. I had no 'Page from file...' option under Edit > Insert so couldn't follow fmomiano's directions.

I've used the 'drag thumbnails where you want them' routine described above in the past with no problems, this was the first time it hadn't worked. It appears that the document I had was password protected (though I was never prompted for a password) and was created by Adobe Pagemaker 7.0, and encoded using Acrobat Distiller for Windows. Don't know if the creator/encoder really matters.

What I did to solve the problem was to make a duplicate and then follow the directions above. Worked perfectly.

This might also help anyone else that stumbles across this thread:

2 PDF's won't combine into 1 file?

Have had this same issue since I started using macs in 2006... Have fumbled through all the clunky solutions mentioned above... I do believe that RainMeister is onto something with trying to merge jpgs... If you're, in fact, stumped by all the usual tricks not working, I would almost guarantee you're trying to merge jpgs.

SO HERE'S THE ANSWER!!! (for merging jpgs in preview into a single PDF)

With all of your jpegs in one preview window (all jpgs showing in the thumbnail bar on the left), print to PDF. Voila... done.

I'll probably forget this the next time I'm stumped as to why preview won't merge "pdfs"... hope I find my answer! =)

The key I found was that you need to make sure the files you are combining are already in PDF format, and that in the sidebar you need to open the triangle so you see all the pages in the target document and that you drag above the grey line that appears to make sure they combine.

I was having this same difficulty, but discovered by accident that it works if you drop one of the thumbnails directly on top of the other thumbnail. It won't work if you just drop it in the thumbnails sidebar, which is what I was originally doing.

Yes! This worked. Drop it right on top. Then you can rearrange the pages as you want. I could not get it to save into a new combined PDF dropping the pages below the page already in the original PDF. Thank you

Thanks! It helps me a lot! I never think about using "insert."

I just worked on this same problem...combining single page PDF's into a larger, multipage PDF...for well over an hour and discovered the same things as @stanleyfromhonolulu: you can't do it. For whatever reason you can only add pages to a multi page PDF otherwise it simply won't save as a multi page PDF, no matter what you do (trust me, I tried everything!!). To work around this, however, all you need to do is open one of your single page PDF's, insert a blank page, and presto! you now have a multi-page PDF that you can easily drag all the single page PDF's you want into. When you're finished click 'save a version' and then go back and delete the blank page.

I also had a bad hair day trying to combine PDFs in one doc using Preview, but ck614's solution worked perfectly for me, thanks.

If you create a multi-page PDF you can then add additional pages to that doc, and only then..!

So open one of the desired PDFs and go to edit>insert page> and a blank page will appear in the sidebar below the original PDF; you now have a multi-page PDF and can drag additional PDFs into the sidebar. Finally highlight the blank page and Edit> Delete> then Save; that should do it.

For me the question is, why does Apple continue to publish incorrect frustrating directions @ other Apple web sites?

Responding to a super-old OP, but this thread is where my search led me before I figured it out...

It's like bairdcal and The Guv alluded to above. Open the thumbnails sidepane. If it's a one-page PDF, drag your other PDF file, or a page from another PDF directly on top of the one page and release. Wait for the page number underneath the page thumbnail to highlight before you release. This will add it to the current file. Now, there is an unbelievably light grey horizontal line below the last page in the thumbnails, as there was already if you started with a multi-page PDF. If you move off center of your display, it might even not be visible. When you add more pages, pay attention to this line. Dragging pages/files into the sidebar, the line will shift to allow you to drop above/below it. Drop above the grey line and you'll add a new last page to your PDF. Drop below this line and you don't add to your PDF, you just open an additional PDF in the same window. Look at the top title bar in the window - it will say "2 files" or something like that if you did it wrong. Not sure why this would be desirable, but that's how Tim Cook (Steve Jobs?) wanted it...

Thank you! It seems I've been able to export a screen cap as a PDF in the past, but it wouldn't work tonight. However, opening the print window and saving as PDF did convert it and then I was able to merge easily.

Try this. Open all PDFs in Preview. Open Thumbnail view. Arrange in order. Drop in new files. Delete unwanted files.

Now, in the heading (title bar) of the opened Preview file, there should be a summary indicating how many pages you have in your Preview file (ex: the file name may be that of only one PDF file but beside it, there is a summary that indicates, for example, 14 pages - all those you have dropped or opened while in thumbnail view. Now, scroll through while in Thumbnail view and make sure you have all in desired order. Now, go to Print in the File menu. When the Print dialog box comes up, not in the bottom left there is an option to Save or Print as pdf. Select it and when given the option, type in a new file name for your multipage, merged PDF and save to the desired location. Voila, you now created a multi page pdf. Once created, you can now open it in Preview as many times as desired and add and delete files (while in thumbnail view) and just go to Save and it updates, accordingly, the number and order of pages in your merged pdf.

an easier fix altogether is to get a decent piece of software like PDF toolkit+ which allows you to do this and more in a few seconds, is totally intuitive and cheap

This gave me a Headache for way too long.

ANSWER.... Preview ≠ PDF

SOLUTION....

With your 1st document: Select "File" > "Export as PDF" > Save

With your 2nd document: Select "File" > "Export as PDF" > Save

Open the two PDF documents you just saved.

Now, using the PDF files, you can successfully merge pages & documents as described in the Apple Support forum the Apple Suport forum!!!

Preview seems to have problems merging one page pdf's. However, if you Insert a blank page and make the first document a multi-page document, then you can drag the desired one page documents to this multi-page document and merge all pdf's. You then can save the multi-page document with the new name and delete the blank page. This seemed to work for me.

Use the OS option.