Can't combine PDFs in Preview 7.0

Agreed, it should be working correctly. There are two people on this thread having the same problem, and I remember seeing maybe 6-10 hits on Google about this issue.

One reason "millions" are not complaining may be that very few people even know about this function, much less have a need for it. Those using Acrobat can combine files already.

I have just had a clean install done by Apple on my broken (now repaired) MBP. Since all the other features of Preview seem to work, I can live without this function.

Waiting on a 4-5hr full backup as we speak.

Good luck with it, but I would believe that some of those many million would be using the function. Not just you and the half dozen you mention.

Cheers

Pete

It could be that Apple engineers have found another use for arc4random(3) within Preview 7. 😉

OK, found a cheap and dirty workaround. I might even like it better.

Use Keynote. Insert pdfs as slides. Arrange any way, add annotations, export as pdf.

Done!

This works great for individual, single page pngs or pdfs.

For multipage pngs/pdf, Preview works as advertised for me.

NEWS!

Today it works correctly. Am pondering why it wouldn't work yesterday and will today. Of course, I booted off several different disks, changed preferences for startup drives, opened and closed various programs, and turned the thing off overnight.

I also downloaded this morning a free PDF combiner (PDF_Merge) and used it. Wonder if it reloaded the underlying Preview routines to combine pdfs.

So Preview seems back to spec. All tests went easily and smoothly. The + sign and line under combined files were all there.

I presume Preview got a bit or two out of place, then repaired itself after a cold shutdown, or after running the downloaded converter.

I am no geek, so I am only surmising what could have happened. I remember the first AII I bought in 1980. It would get code garbled sometimes and a cold boot would reload the correct stuff and fix the problem.

So, I now have three options, Preview, PDF_Merge, and Keynote.

Wow, I love the automated script idea. What a simple way to combine pdf files! Works absolutely perfectly.

Thanks for the script. Great job!

I experienced this problem trying to combine two one-page PDFs. I dragged the thumbnail of one to the other, and it was showing in the title bar as two PDFs in one window.

I was dragging the thumbnail to the space below the other thumbnail. When I dragged and dropped it onto the thumbnail of the other, a green + icon showed up and it worked.

Please don't be offended if I offer too simple a solution or suggest a user error. I was convinced I had exactly this problem. I have some discomfort with many of the choices in OS design since 10.7, so I was very quick to blame Mavericks for this problem. Then I found this discussion thread and became entirely convinced my copy of Preview would not combine PDFs. Then I realized I was trying to combine jpegs, not PDFs. Please do check the format of the files you're trying to combine.

Cosman glad you got things to work! But I think I have solved the can't combine PDF problem! I had the same problem intermittently, sometimes I could combine and sometimes I couldn't. The issue I think was the files I couldn't combine were password protected! So all you have to do is unprotect them. If you Google unlock PDF's you will find a number of different ways of doing this, but I just used a web based free service pdfunlock.com and it worked great for me. I hope this helps others out there still having this problem.

Having all sorts of problems with Preview. I can't drag another pdf to the thumbnails pane. Open up multiple pdfs with Preferences set to all open in the same window will do it for me, but that's a rather counterintuitive un-Mac-like process. Hitting Print and selecting PDF doesn't do a thing but highlights the Print button, which doesn't save a pdf. Instead you have to open the doc again in Preview, which opens up a combined file renamed as a temporary copy file. From there one should be able to Save As. . . a renamed pdf, but there is no Save As. . . command, which is bizarre. And the close window widget no longer will work with that unsaved copy, and it doesn't even call up a Save? dialog box.

Whatever, there's always one workaround or another, but this is all rather weak GUI.

In my view this is a bug, however here is a workaround...

Open the first pdf, turn on thumbnails from the View menu

Make sure the pdf is fully expanded in the Sidebar so you can see all pages.

Scroll down to last page so you are in the right position to add the next pdf.

Open the next (second) pdf (File==>Open etc), turn on thumnails

Collapse the Sidebar view so you can only see the unexpanded second pdf

Move the new window so you can see the underlying pdf

Drag the second pdf to the bottom on the Sidebar on the underlying pdf (the "+" will finally appear!)

Repeat process for any subsequent pdfs you want to merge.

Hope this helps

This worked, thanks. I just dragged the second pdf's window icon into the thumbnails pane of the first pdf and saw the plus in the cursor. The location line didn't show up, but shutting an eye to improve aim placed succeeding pdfs in the right order. After combining four, one still has to deal with the missing 'Save As..' menu command. So I saved it over the first pdf, which was fine for me because I intended to delete the single pages (after verifying the first one is indeed a combo) but is not quite right.

Neither is the new MoveTo Mail command in lieu of Save As. I understand Mavericks is still young but I don't understand the underlying motives for these little tweaks and changes.

Also, it appears that you can't add any pages to an encrypted PDF, you have to export to an unencrypted PDF, open that, then add the pages you want, then export as an encrypted PDF when you're done.

I wish it would just have told me that when I first tried dragging a page there.

This is the answer! You have to drag one pdf file ontop of the other one inside the thumbnail section. Thank you!

petercole wrote:

I experienced this problem trying to combine two one-page PDFs. I dragged the thumbnail of one to the other, and it was showing in the title bar as two PDFs in one window.

I was dragging the thumbnail to the space below the other thumbnail. When I dragged and dropped it onto the thumbnail of the other, a green + icon showed up and it worked.

Garilla is right. But a better clarification of the procedures to achieve this task under the topic "Combine PDFs" on the Preview Help menu, might be helpful.

They start the help steps with "1. Open the PDFs you want to combine." and follow by "2. In each open PDF, choose View > Thumbnails to display the pages of the PDF in the sidebar." - From the second step it is implicit (to do that, each file needs to be in its own window) what they should state on the first one: '1. Open the PDFs...[in separate windows]'. It would work straightaway and further research avoided.

If the files were chosen and open from Finder, they would display on a single Preview window, with thumbnails on the sidebar - A user might believe that the application had already done the first two steps and the rest of the help instructions (from the source above) would not work, as happened to me.

I do not know how it used to work on previous versions. As it is explained on the Preview Help menu, it does work and for this reason I would not consider a bug, but simply their way to get it done. Also this documentation I am referring is efficacious, if carefully studied - hence my whole discussion: do I want to get simple things done swiftly, or thoroughly interpret few instruction lines whenever I need help?

Hopefully, just humble words to praise great products like these.