Merging multiple PDF files in Mavericks

Try this: Open the .pdf documents with Preview. Go to View>Thumbnails so that Thumbnails are displayed. Select the Thumbnails you want to combine. Go to Print. In the Print screen, go to PDF in lower left corner. Click on "Save as PDF." You should get a screen allowing you to rename the combined document. Hit Save.

Star!!! Thanks so much for this, I was banging my head against the wall!! 😀

HaroldandMaud thank you so much!

No matter how much skillful dragging and hovering according to Apple's instructions I tried, no little green + sign ever showed up.

You have saved my sanity!

Thank you.

I can drag each PDF file into one and then Save, but it only saves the one page that is highlighted at the moment. I've tried hitting Save, Duplicate and then Save, Export, and Export as PDF. I've also tried highlighting all of them after I've drug them into the same PDF before I Export. It only ever saves one at a time. This is so frustrating and shouldn't be this hard. Please help!

Thank you so much!. I still had to drag each file into the left pane of Preview for the first file I opened, because each opened in individual windows. But the rest of the steps worked just as you described! Thank you for clarifying for me. I really appreciate it.

There's also an Automator Action that can do it:

I too want to thank you for this excellent tip. I needed to merge 300 single pages into a single 300-page document. This worked superbly.

There is an easier way of merging a number of PDFs into one PDF file.

If you open the pdf in preview which is intended to be the first page in your final file, and then click Edit -> Insert -> Page from file it will direct you to your filing system where you can select another pdf file from any other file in your system, it will add it to the page already opened. You can repeat this process untill you have all the pages you need.

Once all the pages are included then you can just save the final file with all its pages using the print function discribed in the first response.

This is the easiest way to do this.

@suzy91: Wow! It can't get any easier than that. Thanks for the tip.

I can never remember that I need to save it by doing the Print as a PDF; I just want to save it.

For me, the green plus sign worked okay, as long as I understood how...

Here's the best explanation I've seen of the process that lets me do it the "old way" I first learned with: http://macintoshhowto.com/pdf/how-to-merge-2-pdf-files-with-os-x-mavericks-10-9. html (I can't take credit for it, but I think it's really good!)

Yes, it can get a lot easier than that. Drag and drop is what Apple invented in 1985 and now seems to have forgotten. You should't have to do "research", you should drag and drop files into the thumbnail display from other thumbnails or stand alone files, to assemble multi-page PDFs visually like it used to be, before they used the same interface to display multiple files. Other files should be fenced off with a nice thick line, and an obvious triangle to show or hide thumbnails of subsequent pages in the case of multipage files. (Or at least the green plus button should work reliably).

I am just opening the first file in PDF Pen (PDF annotation program); things work very fluidly as described above, then just save the file, the way Preview used to be.