Can I combine multiple .PDF files into one book?

[Bobosmite]

I'm studying for my Security+ and the book came with an electronic version. But, the directory is about 20 .PDF files with an .HTML index. Is there a way to use Calibre to combine this into something I can put on my reader? This might be something I could ask the Kindle forum maybe? I'm not too sure where this topic falls best.

[donB006]

Originally Posted by Bobosmite

I'm studying for my Security+ and the book came with an electronic version. But, the directory is about 20 .PDF files with an .HTML index. Is there a way to use Calibre to combine this into something I can put on my reader? This might be something I could ask the Kindle forum maybe? I'm not too sure where this topic falls best.

You have problems if you want to convert the pdf files to anything with Calibre. Using reflow or extracting the text only works for very simple pdfs. An easier way is to combine all of the pdfs and then put the final pdf in your e-reader.

There are some regular utilities for working with pdf files outside of Calibre. If you have access to a linux machine then just convert all of the pdf files to ps with pdf2ps and then: " cat *.ps | ps2pdf - out.pdf " Be sure you get the ps files in the order you want to read them. The dash is to cause ps2pdf to accept the ps files from stdin and the out.pdf would be your final pdf made from combining all of the 20 ps files made from the 20 pdfs.

I am sure there are many other ways to do the same thing; this is what I have used for many years. The resulting pdf files work fine in an ebook reader if you have sharp eyes or a large size e-reader.
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[northstar7]

Hi. You could also try using nitro pro 7, which has a 14-day free trial.

If you open one pdf with nitro pro, it's very easy to insert another pdf before or after any page you select. I've used this to insert a cover page image at the beginning of a book pdf.

It's basically as easy as inserting text at the beginning of a word document.

[PeterT]

Also try http://www.pdfjoin.com/

[BetterRed]

If anyone ever needs to convert a pdf to postscript on Windows here's a... sneaky, free and arguably legal... way do it - http://tech.gluga.com/2012/07/conver...n-windows.html

In this instance one would concatenate the 20 .ps files (copy 1.ps_2.ps+...20.ps all.ps) before the pushing combined postscript (all.ps) into the ps2pdf converter.

BR

[Roice59]

Hey ive got a similar problem atm, might have a look into calibre... just that i have 40 pdfs i need to combine into one

im gonna give google anther chance but not been too succesful

e/ i did manage to find something but i think it will take ages www.combinepdf.cc/

[AnotherCat]

I use either PDFCreator or Primo PDF (and there are others too, but those are just the two I have used for many years). Sometimes one will work better than the other.

They will convert some other file types to PDF and also join PDFs together into one and do all the postscript stuff automatically; they install as printers. So whatever one wants to be converted to PDF (assuming supported) one just opens that file (so if a PDF, open in whatever it is that you use for reading those) and print it, select PDFCreator or Primo PDF as the printer and print and it will create the PDF file with the name you select.

To join multiple files (they do not have to be all of the same type) into one book with PDFCreator is pretty obvious, but in PrimoPDF not so; print the first file of the new book and when asked give it a file name, then print the second file and give it the same name as the first which then asks whether to Append or Overwrite, so one just appends; keep repeating in the correct order as they are to be in the final book for however many files one has.

For inserting or removing pages I use PDF Split and Merge (that thanks to Jackie_W's lead). As the name infers, it also merges files too.

[dennis123]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

I use either PDFCreator or Primo PDF (and there are others too, but those are just the two I have used for many years). Sometimes one will work better than the other.

I tried PDFcreator from www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator and I can't find an option to select the paper size. So I end up with different paper sizes. Do you know if I overlook something? I really like it because there was no other way to get a PDF from our backoffice program. At the moment I user PDFforge to generate the PDF's and then http://online-pdf.org to transform to A3 paper.
A normal software package would be a lot faster for me. PrimoPDF seems to be a trial. Is there an (free) alternative that offers pdf page size selection directly from the print menu? Thank you

[AnotherCat]

PrimoPDF is free at http://www.primopdf.com/, NitroPro is the free trial before purchase application - the free one is that to which I was referring, NitroPro has PDF creation, editing and conversion tools.

PrimoPDF installs as a printer, and page size and % scaling of the document are set in the standard print dialogue that comes up as it does for all printers when a document is sent to them. The scaled document will show in the print dialogue preview window overlaid on the selected paper size.

From memory PDF Creator worked much the same in that respect but I have not been using it recently - that because they changed it significantly in a beta release and that seemed to have some things missing. It looks as if that has gone to stable release now but I have not got around to trying it.

I'll have a look at the latest PDF Creator version when I get a chance and report back here.

John

[BetterRed]

The Bullzip PDF Driver can also merge PDF's

It's free, no frills, candy or nags (as at Oct 4 2014) - I also like it because of its name

BR

[dwig]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The Bullzip PDF Driver can also merge PDF's

It's free, no frills, candy or nags (as at Oct 4 2014) - I also like it because of its name

BR

+1 to both BullZIP and PrimoPDF.

I've used PrimoPDF for many years on Windows OSs since Win2000 and WinME and used BullZIP for the past year or so on Win8.0 & 8.1. Both are excellent.

Using a PDF virtual printer is a good tool for "flattening" complex PDFs. Simply open the PDF in Adobe Reader or whatever "big" PDF reader you use and then print to disk using PrimoPDF or BullZIO. The output from either of these is often much more palatable to eBook readers.

This is/was an ancient thread but if I were in the OP's position I would first try converting each PDF to EPUB individually and then merging the EPUBs. That way you can use different "magical incantations" for each conversion of the PDFs as each individual file requires. The merged EPUB could then be used as the master for converting to the desired final eBook format (e.g. Kindle, ...)

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

PrimoPDF is free at http://www.primopdf.com/, NitroPro is the free trial before purchase application - the free one is that to which I was referring, NitroPro has PDF creation, editing and conversion tools.

PrimoPDF installs as a printer, and page size and % scaling of the document are set in the standard print dialogue that comes up as it does for all printers when a document is sent to them. The scaled document will show in the print dialogue preview window overlaid on the selected paper size.

From memory PDF Creator worked much the same in that respect but I have not been using it recently - that because they changed it significantly in a beta release and that seemed to have some things missing. It looks as if that has gone to stable release now but I have not got around to trying it.

I'll have a look at the latest PDF Creator version when I get a chance and report back here.

John

@Dennis123

I had a look at PDFCreator with regards to your query. It seems as if the latest version is still effectively the Beta that I described before so I have not looked at that again, instead am referring to the stable version 1.7.3. My description is a bit convoluted so in reading it it is important to remember that the PDFCreator "printer" (and the PrimoPDF one too) is a virtual printer, printing a source document (e.g. MSWord, .jpg, or whatever) to it results in a .pdf file.

Its page size and scaling are set up in the printer dialogue, just like PrimoPDF, when one sends the source document to be converted directly to "print" from another application with PDFCreator as the "printer" (which saves it as PDF file).

But if one alternatively uses the PDF Creator Print Monitor it saves the converted PDF as the size of the source document and one changes the paper size and scaling when printing the resultant PDF from ones PDF reader software to ones paper printer, or sets it up before conversion by changing the document size in the application the source document is "printed' to PDF format from.

So then, after converting using the PDF Print Monitor, in the case of printing the converted PDF to a real printer one then sets in the Windows print dialogue the desired paper and scaling for the actual printed paper copy. Or, if one then prints that converted PDF to the PDFCreator "printer" from ones PDF reader application the Windows print dialogue settings will result in a saved PDF having whatever page size and scaling one set in that dialogue.

As others have chimed in with there are other applications that do similar. For myself my comment to the original poster that:

"those are just the two I have used for many years. Sometimes one will work better than the other."

applies - I don't have time to go hunting through all the alternatives . Most of my source documents are produced in MSWord so since that started "printing" to PDFs (2007?) my use of other conversion tools has declined to being "casual".