How to combine PDF files on a Mac

Put several PDFs, scans or photos into one document, in the order you choose.

Free: with Preview

1. Open the first PDF in Preview and show thumbnails (View ▸ Thumbnails).
2. Drag other PDFs from Finder into the thumbnail sidebar, where you want them.
3. Save.

With Stillpage

1. Choose Merge in the sidebar, drop in the PDFs and drag them into order.
2. Click Merge… and choose where to save.

To turn photos or scans into one PDF, use Create PDF instead: drop in images (and PDFs or text files), drag them into order, and leave Make searchable on to run text recognition at the same time.

Inside an open document you can also insert pages from another file, and drag the page thumbnails to reorder them.

Tips for combining

• Name files with numbers first (01-cover, 02-contract…) so they sort in the right order before you start.
• Rotate sideways pages before merging, so the finished file reads cleanly.
• Create PDF adds a bookmark for each source file, which makes long combined documents easy to navigate.
• If the result is too large to email, run Compress on it afterwards.

Common questions

Can I combine Word or Pages documents? Export them to PDF first (File ▸ Export as PDF in Pages or Word), then combine the PDFs. Create PDF also accepts plain text files and images directly.

Are the originals changed? No. Merging writes a new file wherever you choose; the source PDFs stay as they were.