One of the best-known extensions is Adobe Acrobat PDF, a format that has been with us for a long time and is very useful. But sometimes, we have so many files together that the need to combine PDFs becomes vital.
Do you want to learn how to combine PDF files with your Mac? In this article we will tell you everything about how you can join PDF files, why to do it and some curiosities about the format.
What are PDF files and why are they so special?
Ebooks benefited from the development of PDF
The development of the PDF format began in 1991 when John Warnock, one of the founders of Adobe, proposed the creation of a file format that would allow identical-looking documents to be viewed on different devices and operating systems.
Let us not forget that to date, there were tons of text processing programs and compatibility between them was something that was not even thought of, and that many times it was not even done as a method of encouraging competition (for example, if the administrations public companies were turning to using Microsoft Word, therefore everyone who works with them is going to hire it).
With the idea of ​​breaking this paradigm, our friend John got to work and in 1993 launched the first version of Adobe Acrobat, which achieved what it set out to do: that no matter what computer we were viewing a file on, it would always be It was going to look exactly the same as if it were an image... but we were in front of a text file that you could edit with Acrobat.
And the move turned out well for them, being one of the most popular formats to date, reaching its peak in 2008 where Adobe released the Acrobat specifications, making it possible for any developer to adopt this format and turning it into one of the most popular formats. most used file formats worldwide to share electronic documents, e-books, forms or manuals.
Why is it important to merge PDF?
A PDF file alone can have value, but For practicality, it is often interesting to combine PDF to make it easier to find and manage information, especially when dealing with large documents or projects with multiple parts.
In addition to being able to bring together different sources of information in a single file to be classified and avoid loss of information due to lack of control with the files, combining PDF can help us also optimize space that our files take up: instead of having several separate PDF files, combining them into a single file can help save storage space and make file management, or even file printing, more efficient, since there will only be one source to have as a reference.
By unifying files we also access a collateral advantage that for me is crucial in PDF and that has helped me a lot, both in my academic life and in my personal life: the Adobe Search, which works wonderfully well.
And in this regard, I will give a clear example: when I studied a law subject, the vast majority went with the printed law while I opted to use it in PDF, before it became popular to use tablets. The result was that my time to do the exercises was much faster than that of my classmates because I went directly to the articles without wasting time searching through pages, making me more productive than the average of my classmates.
ILovePDF: Join PDF online, without downloading any program
Regardless of your operating system, there are numerous websites that allow you to join your PDFs without having to install anything and for free.
And as a service it's great, but personally I would only use it in the case of non-confidential files, nothing happens if they fall into the wrong hands. When using these online converters, what you are really doing is uploading the file to a server of a third company that you do not know, which is the one that processes it.
So for security and privacy, we advise you that if you choose this method you always do so keeping this in mind in case anything happens.
Among the multiple online services, the one that has given us the best results is the website ILovePDF, which offers both the options of joining (Merge PDF), break them (Split PDF), compress them or convert PDF to other popular formats.
The use is rather simple, you simply have to check the option Select PDF Files, choose them and then order them. Once you do, you will be given the option to Convert and you can now join the files you want without major problems.
The best program to combine PDF
There are different programs that allow us to unify and be able to work with the PDF format without having to pay for an Acrobat license, which is relatively expensive for home use and which are completely legal thanks to the liberalization of the format that we mentioned before.
But to simplify everything, we are going to talk to you about the best program to combine PDF according to our experience: PDFsam.
PDFsam: a powerful open source editor
PDFsam is short for PDF Split and Merge, which basically tells us in his name what he does.
The advantage that this program has over other competing programs is that it is open source and that It is available for free download for its use. Although there is a premium option with a ton of features... to combine PDFs, the basic option works very well and is totally secure.
In terms of functionality, It is extremely easy to use: You simply have to click Add when you open it, it will let you select the PDFs you have and at the end it will let us rename the PDF that it is going to create once it combines them, and it will ask us for the location of where we want to save it.
To download it, you can do it from the author's own website in DMG format.
We hope that this article has been useful to you in knowing how to join PDF files with your Mac, and if you know of any other option that you think is worth knowing, We invite you to post it in the comments section!