This is such a coincidence I read this today because I was just trying to do this exact thing. I couldn't get it to work, so I'd used GraphicConverter's "print folder" feature and chose the option to save as PDF.

However, since I saw the hint, I tried to do it in preview thinking maybe the resolution would be better. I could not get this hint to work. Perhaps I've got some settings in preview which are thwarting this strategy. Here's what I tried.

I have a series of 43 PNG images which I would like to save as a series of pages in a PDF. I can open all the images with Preview such that they all appear in one drawer, but if I try to save it, it only saves the currently displayed single PNG in PNG format. If I try to print to a PDF, it only stores (again) the single PNG which is displayed (in PDF format).

So I tried copying all the files in the finder and doing command-n in Preview, however I end up at the same point as above: I can save 1 PNG or print 1 image to PDF. How do I save them all as pages in 1 PDF document using Preview?

So then I tried taking one of the actual PDF files I'd printed a single image to and tried dragging (from multiple sources, including the finder, another preview window's drawer, and the title bar icons) images into the PDF I'd created (i.e. dragging into the drawer) with the first image. Preview would not let me drop them into the PDF. They'd either jump back to the source drag location or poof away.

What am I doing wrong or are there any required settings for this to work?

Thanks,
Rob

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Oh sheesh. Could somebody (i.e. Rob) delete my previous comment (and this one)? I just realized this is a 10.5 only hint. I'm still on 10.4. My bad! *smack* Well, I look forward to being able to do this in the future with Preview!

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On 10.4, you might like to try the a great little app called PDFLab:

http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/pdflab/


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I ran into an issue yesterday that after merging two pdfs created by Indesign in Preview, the saved pdf looks fine to us on Leopard and Tiger, but in Acrobat Reader 7 on a PC the program claims there are fonts missing - and it displayed only generic, wrong fonts. But the original pdfs display fine on a PC - so the re-save feature clearly changes something to the pdfs' internal working.

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Actually, upgrading to Reader v. 8 on the PC fixes this problem. Great!

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This is great to know (I ran into this problem last week and didn't find this solution), but it really shouldn't require v. 8, right? There's no reason Preview should save PDFs that are weirdly incompatible with v. 7.

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Funny that it would be documented on that Apple page, but searching the Preview Help for "combine pdf" or "merge pdf" shows 0 results. That's what I meant when I said it was undocumented. There is also no menu option to do it.

Ben

PS: robg, I apparently mis-typed "Command" as "Comand" in the hint. Can you fix this?

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you can also drag the pdf file's icon in from the Finder directly onto the drawer of an open PDF in Preview

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Good hint. I wonder if there's a way to use Preview to save just one page of a pdf as a new pdf file. Anyone know?

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For that you can go to print the file, choose the page range and save as PDF.

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Only works if you have the thumbnail view in the sidebar selected. That should actually be mentioned in the hint imo.

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You can also drag individual pages from sidebar to sidebar.

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A big problem with this is that when dragging and dropping a whole bunch of files from the finder, Preview won't respect the sort order in the finder - even if the files are named sequentially: 01.pdf, 02.pdf, 03.pdf etc. The only way to do it is to drag them in one-by-one. Apple can do better...

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I've been trying to do this, but only succeeded when I realised that at the bottom of the sidebar is a button to change from the Table of Contents (which seems to be the default) and which the above methods don't work with to thumbnails which do.

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When I dragged files, Preview seemed to add them in the correct order.

However, I have another issue regarding creation of PDF files using Preview. I compared using Preview to create a PDF file from a Word document (86Kb), and then used Adobe Acrobat Distiller (18Kb) version 7 to do so. The Preview-created PDF file was nearly five times larger. Does anyone know why this is or how it can be changed? Please note that I have both set to 300 dpi. Thanks in advance.

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The simplest (and least expensive) way is to create a 2-step Automator application that containds the following automator steps:

1: Ask for Finder Items (allow multiple selection) - to select the images/pdf files
2. New PDF From Images or
2: Combine PDF Pages

This will save a single file with all your desired scanned images into one file.

---
D. Brownstone

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Merge PDFs? Not really. Sure you can drag multiple document together but you can't save them off into one document. Seems like a dumb feature without the save capability. Please Apple... think about usability... and close this feature out by making it savable!

I chatted with apple support and they didn't even know you could drag multiple documents into one preview window.

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The only part of the directions that is missing is the Saving as One PDF.
1. Get the pdfs in the right order
2. File - Print
3. PDF - Save as PDF
4. Name it
5. Save it
Now you have one PDF from all of the multiple PDFs

Further directions:
http://classroom.leanderisd.org/webs/wms.tech/upload/pdf_merging.mov


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