Level 1

2 points

Yosemite: Preview Won't Manipulate or Merge PDFs

Using Yosemite 10.10 on 10-18-14 with a Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013, I can't manipulate PDFs using Preview 8.0. The PDF is not locked, and I have full read/write permission.

I can open a PDF. I can delete a page in a PDF. I can rotate a page in the PDF. However, I CAN'T move a page from one location to another within the same PDF. I CAN'T merge the contents of one PDF into another PDF.

When I try to move a page within a PDF a "hole" opens up between the pages (that slid apart to allow the page to be moved there) but the page is not moved to that location and the "hole" does not close up until the PDF is closed and reopened. When I drag the source PDF to the desired position inside the thumbnail on the left side of the recipient PDF, the thumbnail pages slide apart and the green + appears over the icon for the source PDF confirming that I want to add the PDF in that location. However when I release the mouse, the document springs back to its former location without being added. Unlike in an attempted page move, however, the thumbnails slide back together.

I have to manipulate PDFs all the time, and if anyone can tell me what I'm (suddenly) doing wrong, I would be most appreciative. I have Adobe Acrobat, so I can work around the problem, but Acrobat is slow and difficult to work with. Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 18, 2014 9:55 AM

82 replies

Dec 17, 2014 6:49 AM in response to Litag8r

Yep. Me too. I've used Preview to merge multiple PDF's for work, and only recently (Yosemite?) has Insert > Page from file... stopped working for most documents. Very frustrating. I know that Apple and Adobe have been at odds forever, but why the change all of a sudden?

MBP 13" Mid-2012, 8GB, OSX 10.10.1,

tgonamac

Level 1

8 points

Dec 17, 2014 7:05 AM in response to tgonamac

so I go back into Preview on both my iMac and MBP and it now works. Adding, removing, moving around... all on the same files that didn't work earlier the same day. Don't think it was an update, but who knows.

Dec 17, 2014 7:44 AM in response to smackit

There is an easier way: File -> Duplicate, Then Save.

This removes the origin (download URL etc) and the Security setting. You can verify those in Finder's 'Get Info' in the 'More Info' section.

Still *****, but it's workaround...

Dec 19, 2014 10:34 AM in response to SFDsfddfa

I tried Duplicate followed by Save, but that did not work; the saved document still had just one page, not two.

My successful work-around was to print the merged document to PDF.

Dec 19, 2014 11:50 AM in response to Steve_in_SB

"You are using it wrong" 🙂

Duplicate does not duplicate pages. It duplicates the whole document. The Duplicate is necessary to remove the protection from the original file.

bj_110

Level 1

8 points

Dec 24, 2014 9:38 AM in response to vchapple17

I had the same problem with scanned PDFs, but after I printed them to PDF and then tried to merge them it worked again as before.

Jan 3, 2015 11:01 PM in response to Litag8r

Found a work around to this issue:

Open your pdfs and combine them as usual. Drag and drop or sort as you please by thumbnail.

Then instead of "save as" or "export as", choose PRINT instead.

At the bottom right you'll see a box that says "PDF" with a drop arrow, choose save as pdf, choose your destination, then VOILA!

Issue fixed 🙂

Jgrfn

Level 1

4 points

Jan 5, 2015 11:23 AM in response to Litag8r

I went through each and every suggestion thus far, to no avail. Had this same issue last week and the exporting of files in Print mode worked, but that wouldn't work today for the three files I needed to merge. What DID work (today--hopefully tomorrow as well!) was to open all three documents with thumbnail view and make sure all documents weren't stacked--you need to have every page open in the thumbnail section. A quick <command a> to highlight all pages on document 2 then allowed me to drag to the end of the first (also totally opened) document--never been so happy to see a green + in my life! Also worked with the third document (all thumbnails viewable), dragging it to the end of document 2, which followed document 1. Crazy easy but it worked--previously (pre-Yosemite) they needed to NOT be open in thumbnail view, but now they do.

Good luck all!

Jan 11, 2015 12:04 PM in response to Jgrfn

Try this:

Open the first PDF and ensure that "Thumbnails" view is enabled
Drag the second PDF to be added/merged onto (directly on top of) the thumbnail of the open PDF (rather than under or over it).
This should provide a multi-page PDF that can then be re-ordered. Use the triangle next to the filename in the thumbnail view to expand/collapse the pages.

It seems as though Preview now includes the ability to use the thumbnail view as "tabs" to view multiple PDFs that way rather than requiring multiple windows be open. I believe this is leading to some of the confusion in this thread.

The PDF print option mentioned earlier in the thread works as well, but it seems to cause changes to the PDF (seems to be addition of margins for printing).

Jan 11, 2015 2:22 PM in response to SamuelBTL

Hi..

Thanks for this. It is actually how and what I have been doing in the past. Yes it does work for a while but after a period of time the PDF locks and then you can no longer add any pages or make changes until after the document has been closed and system rebooted. I think that the issue is that something changed in Yosemite and it is more of a bug and needs to be sorted out. Thanks for the suggestion though...

Ignifero

Level 1

0 points

Jan 12, 2015 1:17 PM in response to Litag8r

Try this http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_combine_multiple_pdfs_using_previe w It worked for me.

gsilas

Level 1

0 points

Jan 17, 2015 12:26 PM in response to Ignifero

That link is no help because though it looks like it is combining, it doesn't actual combine in Yosemite

gsilas

Level 1

0 points

Jan 17, 2015 12:30 PM in response to gsilas

ok, so I have a workaround....

1) go to FINDER, highlight all the documents you want to combine (doesn't matter is JPG or PDF or other).

2) Right click on the highlighted files and choose "Open using Preview"

3) Once open, choose PRINT from Preview file menu

4) in the print drop-down box, DO NOT click PRINT, instead, towards the bottom left, click PDF and choose "SAVE AS PDF".

5) Choose location to save to , file name, and you are done

Ric GF

Level 1

66 points

Jan 25, 2015 6:04 AM in response to SamuelBTL

Just to confirm Samuel's suggestion, which works absolutely fine. In other words, I don't think there is any outstanding Yosemite bug - just lack of clarity on Apple's part, since they should explain that files MUST be exactly dragged AND dropped ON the host file.

The Print to PDF is also a fine workaround even if the above did not apply.

So we can all say that this case is closed 😉

Litag8r Author

Level 1

2 points

Jan 25, 2015 8:55 AM in response to Ric GF

Well as much as I love being told that the problem I have been having problems with is not a bug and I just need to try it again, I decided to take a more scientific approach to my problem to see if I was crazy. Turns out, I'm not. 😉

My hypothesis was that since combining PDFs works for some people and not others, there might be something different about the PDF documents they are using to test functionality. Said differently, perhaps not all PDFs are created equally since we all appear to be using the same software. After all, some scanned documents have an OCR layer and some do not. Some PDFs appear to have identical content yet one take up a tiny amount of disc space and the other takes up a huge amout. (This is something identified earlier in this string by someone else.) Therefore I identified three "types" of PDFs and tried to combine PDFs that were (1) generated directly from Word, (2) scanned from my scanner, and (3) scanned from another scanner and annotated using Preview. I tried to combine all three "types" of PDFs with all three types (9 possible combinations). Note that I did not even try locked PDFs. I will also note that the PDFs where chosen at random from the thousands that I routinely use in my work. The generated document was only 1 page long. The scanned document was 156 pages long. The annotated document was 18 pages long.

The result is that if I drag to combine a generated (or clean) PDF INTO any other type of PDF it works just like it used to before Yosemite. The generated PDF is added to the original PDF. However it is impossible for me to drag to combine ANY of the other two types of documents to combine them.

Preview does, however, open, print, split (drag pages out to create a new PDF), reorder pages, and delete pages just fine. Therefore my conclusion is that only feature that seems to have a bug is combining PDF documents when the document to be added to the other is NOT a virgin, clean, computer-generated PDF.

I would like to see if anyone else can replicate this same bug, or if the 26 or so people who have reported the same problem just have a "unique" system problem.

Some folks have devised some work-arounds to the problem. However, I combine PDFs daily, and I don't need a more complicated or time-consuming method to combine PDFs. I routinely combine a dozen or more documents into one PDF. I have been using Adobe Acrobat to combine PDFs, but am considering PDFPenPro from Smile Software as my default PDF program. Adobe is slow, laggy, and ponderous in operation, and often the combine PDF operation crashes the program. I would prefer that Preview just do its job, however.

My testing was conducted using Yosemite 10.10.1 and preview 8.0 on 1-25-15.

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Yosemite: Preview Won't Manipulate or Merge PDFs