Have a variety of files you’d like to combine into a single PDF file? You can do that right on the Mac.
Perhaps you have a handful of documents you’re working with, or perhaps you need to send along multiple PDF files via email. When appropriate, you can combine these files into a single PDF file and then work with that document easily.
Merging PDF files may be necessary when there are different pages to combine into a single document. Many users may rely on using a third-party PDF editor to accomplish this task, but you can do this without installing any app on your Mac. This is possible in several ways, including using Preview, but what we’ll be covering here is by using the ‘Create PDF’ Quick Action on macOS.
Let’s take a look at using Quick Actions to combine different files into a single PDF file on your Mac. And the input files don’t even need to be PDF documents, they can be images or other file formats too.
Accessing the Create PDF Quick Action is a pretty simple and straightforward procedure on your Mac.
Head over to the directory where your files are stored. Hold the Command key and click on the files to select the ones you want to combine.
Next, right-click or Control-click to access various options. Here, select “Quick Actions” which is located at the bottom.
Now, click on “Create PDF” to combine the files you selected.
The combined file will be automatically created with a name similar to the first file you selected. However, you’ll have the option to rename the final file as shown in the screenshot below.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. Now you know how easy it is to combine files into a single PDF file on your Mac.
As you can see, this is arguably the easiest way to combine multiple PDF documents into a single file on macOS. Plus, you don’t have to spend any money on third-party PDF editing apps to get this done, since this functionality is built into all recent versions of macOS.
You can also select the files in Finder and use the Create PDF button in the Preview pane of a Finder window. If you can’t find the preview pane, it needs to be enabled first. Click on “View” from the menu bar and choose “Show Preview” from the dropdown menu.
Note the Mac must be running macOS Mojave or later to take advantage of this method to combine files. If you’re using an older version of Mac system software, you can instead rely on joining multiple PDF files into one with Preview instead, a method that also still works in modern macOS releases too by the way. If your Mac is running an older version of macOS or Mac OS X, you can use Mac Preview to combine multiple files, add additional files, remove pages from a PDF, and export as a single merged PDF file on your computer too.
Is the combined PDF file too large? This is pretty common, but you can reduce the file size by using a trick to adjust the Quartz filter used. However, doing this will also degrade the quality of the images and artwork within the document.
So how did it go? Were you successful in merging multiple PDF files into a single document with this Quick Action? What’s your take on this Quick Action method? Let us know your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
