Merging Files into a single PDF

[Ron_Mac]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I have installed Office Mac 2008, Home & Student Edition, on a new Mac desktop computer along with Acrobat 9 Pro for Mac OS. In Acrobat, combine files, into a single pdf…word .doc and .docx files are not recognized for one step selection, conversion and merger. They must be converted to pdf first and one at a time. Acrobat can only combine and merge pdf's and many other file types but not Word. Adobe tells me that Office 2008 for Mac does not include a macro the allows for the select, convert and merge one step process feature that I had with office XP and Acrobat 8 standard on my old PC. Is this correct and is there a fix?

 

[Rob Schneider]

I don't understand what you are asking for.

To assemble a PDF that holds the contents from files of other types, it
is necessary to first create PDF's from those other types, e.g.

DOCX => PDF
DOC => PDF
XLS => PDF
PPT => PDF

Then you use tool to combine those PDF's into a big PDF. The best (and
most expensive) tool is Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader). It will
handle the converted files. It can't and won't import DOC or other files.

If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, then you can use Preview which is
included with OS X. Searching Google for "mac combine pdf" finds the
article:
http://www.macworld.com/article/143023/2009/09/combine_pdf_snow_leopard.html

There are also discussions seen on this Google search list how to
automate the process. I've never tried that.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[Randy Singer (MacAttorney)]

Adobe tells me that Office 2008 for Mac does not include a macro the allows for the select, convert and merge one step process feature that I had with office XP and Acrobat 8 standard on my old PC. Is this correct and is there a fix?

Word 2008 does not include Visual Basic, so there are no VB macros at
all for Word. You might be able to either find or create yourself an
AppleScript or Automator macro to do what you want to do, but I don't
know of any offhand.

The next version of Word/Office will again include Visual Basic, and
it is slated to be released late this year.
http://www.macworld.com/article/142266/2009/08/office_2010_outlook.html

Apple's Preview (part of OS X) won't open Office files, but it will
allow you to merge PDF's quickly and easily:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071114191806624
http://www.macworld.com/article/143023/2009/09/combine_pdf_snow_leopard.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/145129/2009/12/pdftips.html
If you are not using Snow Leopard this one tells you how to do it:
http://www.macworld.com/article/132468/2008/04/workingmac2504.html

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
___________________________________________

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Ron;

I don't claim to definitively *know* the answer, but let's think this
through logically Once a file has been created & saved, what impact
could the creating app (Word) have over what another app (Acrobat) does with
that file? If what Adobe told you is true what you describe wouldn't even be
possible on a Windows system unless Word were installed. What is true is
that there is no Adobe Toolbar in Office 2008 due to the lack of VBA which
prevents triggering the process from within Word. Acrobat should still be
able to do its own thing as a stand-alone app, but it can't. And if that's
the fact, why doesn't it work with Word 2004 installed which *does* support
VBA/macros?

Now for the subjective comments Adobe is blowing smoke just like most
other developers. The common perception is that Apple, MS & Adobe all play
the 'blame game', & to a certain extent that is true. They work together for
the most part, but there comes a time where one or the other starts to be
more cognizant of the bottom line. At that point a decision is made to stay
within budget, stay on schedule or whatever [the conspiracy theorists will
tell you that it's just plain spite]. The net result is that Acrobat for
Windows & Acrobat for Mac lack feature parity just as the MS products do.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[pjonesCET]

Once you create individual pdf go into Acrobat and go to open first PDF. Go to Document menu. Choose Insert Pages. Choose one of the other documents and choose After. THen repeat the process until you get the PDF assembled. Then save as another PDF. and your done.

You might can do the same thing in PDFPen I haven't tried yet.

 

[Ron_Mac]

Thanks for your thoughts. Some of you are missing the issue however. In a PC running Windows XP and Acrobat 8 Standard, the command in Acrobat to "merge files" into a "single PDF," is single seamless process. You select files of all types and they list in the "merge" window. Then with a single click "create" Acrpbat converts all file types to PDF (if they are not already a PDF) and merges them. This is not an essential feature but sure is a nice tool. You don;t have to first convert/save DOC and DOCX files to PDF and then use the "merge" tool.

The workaround of pjonesCET is a nice approach but if the first pages are Word, you do have to convert it, etc.

Ron Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Ron:

You will find that Flash is not the only reason Apple and Adobe don't like
each other.

Acrobat is also crippled in Mac Office. It's Adobe's fault: they were too
lazy to change their code to AppleScript when Microsoft dropped VBA from
Word.

Now that VBA is coming back to Office 2011, I guess Adobe has won...

Cheers

Thanks for your thoughts. Some of you are missing the issue however. In a PC
running Windows XP and Acrobat 8 Standard, the command in Acrobat to "merge
files" into a "single PDF," is single seamless process. You select files of
all types and they list in the "merge" window. Then with a single click
"create" Acrpbat converts all file types to PDF (if they are not already a
PDF) and merges them. This is not an essential feature but sure is a nice
tool. You don;t have to first convert/save DOC and DOCX files to PDF and then
use the "merge" tool.

The workaround of pjonesCET is a nice approach but if the first pages are
Word, you do have to convert it, etc.

Ron Mac

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[Rob Schneider]

I understand the issue you now refer to. Yes, Adobe's "Adobe Acrobat"
working on Windows is better in many ways than their Mac version; hence,
I use the Windows version exclusively whenever I have to work on PDF files.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

In Mac Version go to Document menu > Insert pages > locate pages to
merge. Then if they are out of order, or you want to re arrange them.
Just drag and drop them in desires order. you do that by grabbing the
thumbnail view of the page desired to move and move it to position you
want, and let go the mouse.

To add items when you get into the insert pages menu choose to insert
before or after.

To me its not that complicated.

Are there disadvantages in the Mac version. 1) links for bookmarks, URLs
and mailto's, don't come come over That is an Adobe defect. I recently
download a PDF Utility from CUPS that bring these over just fine.

2) they have a 15 year old problem of if any word document has section
breaks and page breaks will create another PDF at each section or Page
Break. Additional PDF's created by Page breaks are cured by using the
Converter included with Word2008. (except when an Item has changed page
orientation). Sections breaks haven't been cured.

3) Only the PC version is capable of creating XML Based PDF's