When exporting to PDF using Office Word 2011 for Mac OS I found that it split a document into many different PDF files.
After browsing the internet I found that many users had this problem and that Word would break down the document into different sections depending on if the user had changed paper size, for example switched between A3 & A4 or layout type between portrait and landscape.
I exported a piece of coursework for a family member and it exported into five different PDF files.
Having looked online I found it was because the user had switched between landscape and portrait in the page layout section of the document.
There were a few different ways to work around this and I decided I would use an app called Automator which is installed on Mac computers.
Automator is used for automating tasks for a user.
In this blog post I will show you how to use Automator to combine different PDFs with just one click.
First step is to launch Automator and select the service template, you can do this by using the spotlight search.
We are going to be only working with PDF Files so you need to change Service receives selected “PDF Files” and in “Finder”.
Now we need to drag in some Automator actions into the workflow. Search in the actions in the left side panel for “Combine PDF Pages”
The service has now been created, this will let you select multiple PDF files in Finder and then combine them and create a single PDF file out of them.
The last step is to tell Automator where we would like the single PDF file to be saved, Automator will save the file in a system location but it would be easier for us the users to be able to have the file where we want it.
For example I would like my single PDF files to be saved to the desktop so I can locate them easily.
To do this we need to find another action called “Move Finder Items” By default it will choose the desktop but you as the user can choose a specific location.
Save the workflow with a name of your choice for example “Combine PDFs”.
You can now close Automator.
When you need to combine PDFs files all you need to do is find your files in finder and right click and choose the service you just created.
This service doesn’t just have to be used for word documents that split into multiple files when exported. This service is useful when you have multiple PDF documents and would like to combine them into one PDF document for an email etc.
