How to turn several PDFs into a single one
You have the contract in one PDF, the annexes in three more and the receipt in a fifth. Sending five loose files invites someone to leave one unopened.
3 minute read
How to merge them
Open the merge PDF tool and drag all the files in. The order you drop them in does not matter.
Put them in the right order using the arrows on each file. The top one opens the document.
Press Merge PDF.
Download the result. The originals stay untouched where they were.
What survives and what does not
Pages are copied as they are: same resolution, same selectable text, same page size. Nothing is re-compressed, so a merged PDF loses no quality against its parts.
What does get lost are the extras that lived in each separate file: bookmarks, the navigable outline and fillable form fields. All the text and images are there.
And if what I want to merge is not PDFs
- Photos or images: use the images-into-one-PDF tool, which creates a page per photo.
- Several Word files: convert each one to PDF first, then merge them.
- Several Excel files: there is a dedicated tool that merges them into a single workbook, which is almost always what people actually want.
A trick to avoid fighting the order
If there are many files, rename them beforehand with a number in front: 01-contract, 02-annex, 03-receipt. When you select them the system hands them over already sorted and you save yourself the reordering.