10.4: Use Automator to combine PDFs

Jun 16, '05 09:16:00AM

Contributed by: jscotta

Tiger only hintThere have been numerous hints here about how to combine PDFs into a single document. Well, Automator now handles that task very nicely. You can select the documents that you want to combine in the Finder and then Control-click on them to bring up the contextual menu. Choose Automator -> Create Workflow. Once Automator opens, add three steps to your Untitled workflow:

  1. Finder: Get Selected Finder Items. Actually, this one is automatically added if you had the files selected in the Finder.
  2. PDF: Combine PDF Pages (I choose Appending pages).
  3. Finder: Open Finder Items (Open with Default Application).
This will combine everything, then open up a Preview document with all the PDF pages nicely laid out in one document. You can save the workflow if you do this on a regular basis. Then Control-clicking on a group of PDFs will give you a contextual menu with your workflow ready to go.

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