Easily Split And Merge PDF Files With This Easy Tool

I am a lifelong fan of Adobe PDF files but I am unwilling to pay a minimum $300 for Adobe Acrobat. I would much rather look around for free open-source alternatives and today I found a nice little software tool that allows you to take a PDF file and split it up into lots of little PDF files as well as merge lots of PDF files together. It’s called PDF Split and Merge. Just what I was looking for!

Plus if you’re willing to donate a minimum of $1 to the developer, he’ll throw in the enhanced version of the software which will give you the ability to encrypt your files as well.

But for most people, including me, the basic free version will suffice. Let’s take a look at it and see how easy it is to split and merge your PDF documents. Let’s start with merging a file.

After installing the software, open it up and click on “merge / extract” on the left hand side. Then on the right hand side, click on “add”. This will allow you to add the PDF files you want to merge, to the program.

merge pdf files

If there is a password for the PDF file, add it in the “password” column. If you only want certain pages from the file to be merged, put the page numbers in the “page selection” column (such as 1-5, 12, 14).

The next step is to complete this part :

combine pdf files

As you can see, if the PDF file has forms, tick the box. Then indicate the folder where you want the newly merged file to go on your computer in the “destination output file” box. Then click the “run” button. Your merged file should then be made for you in less than a minute or so depending on the size of the files.

Now, to extract pages from a PDF file is also dead simple. Just go through the previous process again but this time, choose only one PDF file. Then in the page selection column, choose the pages you want to extract. Then press the “run” button. Your pages will be extracted as a single PDF file in literally seconds.

The third option is to take a PDF file and split it all the pages up :

Split PDF files

You can also choose to give each new PDF file a prefix such as the name of the original file so you can keep track of which pages belong to which file.

All in all, this is a pretty powerful free tool and it gives you one more reason not to shell out the money for Adobe Acrobat. This is definately going in my “keeper” folder and I am contemplating giving a donation to the developer to try out the encryption feature.

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(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

Tagged: documents • microsoft office • open source • pdf • pdf editors • text editors

Mark O'Neill

Mark O'Neill is the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com

Mike

Finally, I’ve been looking for a too like this for ever!
Thanks
USBman

For another option, you may want to try PDFTK Builder. It too allows a person to split or merge files, but it also can collate, add a background, rotate, and encrypt (unlike the above mentioned ‘basic’ version).

It is open source, and also is availble as a portable version (so you don’t have to install it, and you can run it from a USB drive, SD card, portable HDD, etc).

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

Sounds good, thanks for heads up.
Apul

Hi,

I was finding this too. It really works.

Thanks a lot.

Apul

http://joscafe.com Jo

I downloaded this and used it at work yesterday and it worked great! I had a 119 page file I had to cut down and after a couple hits and misses I got it to split out correctly and then merged the 2 pieces I needed and …. works like a champ!

Going to push IT for this.
BL

mostly great…

but when i try to load a large sized file in.. it just keeps displaying the message that its reading the document…
Jimbo

Yes, I agree – I didn’t want to pay $300 for Adobe!!! but I don’t have a PC! I tried downloading the Mac version of this program, and it didn’t work on my computer (Mac osx). Anyway, I found another one that is easy and actually works:

Join PDFs

It only works on the mac… good for me, but probably not good for all. I hope this helps some of the people who have macs.

GBPackers

Use Automator that comes with the Mac OS. It allows you to merge and extract pdf files, plus a whole lot others. You don’t need to use 3rd party software.

http://www.pdfjoin.com LL

I use a free PDF printer driver to split PDFs – open a PDF in Adobe Reader, press “print”, and select the page(s) to print into a new PDF document.

For my occasional merging needs, I put together a simple web page that uses PDFTK behind the scenes. It is free to use and found at http://www.pdfjoin.com.
Loeffler

This is great! Easy to download and SUPER easy to use. Just what I needed
Becka

This is great! It’s very easy to use!
Kai

Excellent !! this is what i looking for. Easy and cool~
g

I do what user LL does. Get a free printer driver (such as CutePDF) and then in the PDF just click print and select the PDF printer. This will split the files and you don’t have to pay for Adobe Acrobat.
sirwan

wanderfull

thanks a lot
I merge 525 files to a file in a second!

bless U all
http://www.shepherdtech.info Jacob Shepherd

I don’t agree that it splits files in “seconds.” It takes quite a bit longer than Acrobat Full to split a file. Open source is a plus, though, and it has more ready-to-find split options than Acrobat’s clumsy “Print to Acrobat” method of splitting a file. These options include splitting every “n” pages, splitting by size chunks, and splitting at bookmark levels.
Kyra

Thank you! This is invaluable for filing my expense report receipts that I download from different providers, i.e. rental car, cellphone, airline tix and need to merge with manually scanned copies. It allows me to create a single file that has everything included. Much neater.