From housing contracts to business deals, PDFs exist as the official document format in almost every area of the Internet that you need to get work done. But sometimes using popular formats means we need to convert, combine or edit them. However, PDFs can often present quite a challenge when working with different operating systems.
Whether you’re a Mac or Windows user, we’ve detailed the steps to combine your PDF files. Here’s how to do it with whatever computer you have.
How to Combine PDFs: Use PDFGear
Our current favorite way to merge PDFs is a free app called PDFGear. It’s an easy-to-use, quick-to-install desktop app that lets you merge PDFs in just a few steps. No sign-up or subscription required.
PDFGear is available for Windows, macOS, and iOS.
Note: The following instructions were tested and written based on the Windows version of PDFGear.
step 1: Visit the PDFGear website and download the version of the app that is suitable for your PC’s operating system. Then install the app.
step 2: Once it’s installed, open PDFGear. You will then be shown its main menu screen which will display all the PDF editing tools of PDFGear. We are only interested in combining PDFs right now, so select this merger and division Tab.
Screenshot/Anita George/
step 3: then select merge PDF button. Then on the Merge PDF screen that appears select add files,
step 4: Select the PDF files you want to combine and then select open,
Step 5: Once your selected files appear in the PDFGear app, view output file name text box. In that text box, edit the name of your soon-to-be merged PDF file to whatever you want.
Step 6: then select red color Sickness button.
Once the merging of your selected PDFs is complete, you will automatically be shown the file location of your new PDF. From here, you can open and view your newly merged PDF.
Screenshot/Anita George/
How to combine PDFs on the web
There are plenty of free, web-based tools that will allow you to merge PDF files – and that’s good news for you. If you need to merge files quickly, this may be the best option because these programs don’t really care where your PDF files come from or where they are going. They also do not require the installation of any additional programs. However, they may have strict size limitations.
Below are two popular tools for merging PDF files, but keep in mind that they both do the same thing. If you encounter formatting issues with one tool, try another.
- PDF Joiner: PDF Joiner is ideal for all types of file format changes and transformations. Of course, you can combine PDFs with this tool. But you can also convert your final document into other document or image formats. If you’re trying to condense several different formats into one, this tool serves as a great option for pulling your hair out. The only limitation is that the software only allows you to work with 20 files at a time. Depending on your needs (and the frequency of your file merging), this may not be enough.
- SmallPDF: The best feature of Smallpdf is that it’s easy to upload files directly from Dropbox or Google Drive, which is especially helpful if you work on collaborative projects. We’re also fans of how the SmallPDF Merge Tool delivers professional-grade performance. You can view your PDF as you create it, so you’ll know exactly how it will turn out. One drawback is that you can only process up to two documents per day for free.
There are so many different ways to merge PDFs that you may not know which one will best suit your needs; Luckily these work with every OS, so you can try them all. With so many options for combining PDF files, you no longer need to struggle. It doesn’t matter what OS you’re running (or how many files you need to merge), there’s a tool to make it easy.