Across the last ten hearings where I had to assemble files under time pressure, show the pattern in the errors I make …
Open Adobe Acrobat.
Go to File > Combine Files.
Click Add Files and select the PDF files you want to merge.
Arrange the files in your desired order by dragging and dropping them within the list.
Click Combine to merge the selected files into a single PDF document.
Save the new combined PDF to your preferred location.
You can preview and reorder files before combining to ensure the final PDF is in the correct sequence.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
Combining PDFs rarely makes the file smaller because it adds all the content together. It doesn't remove anything. If your combined PDF is too big, you should compress it AFTER you combine the files. This will help reduce the file size without losing quality.
In Adobe Acrobat, 'merging' and 'combining' PDFs mean the same thing. Both terms describe the process of taking multiple separate documents and putting them together into one single PDF file. The feature is called 'Combine Files'.
No, if your original files already had page numbers, they will likely restart with each new document in the combined PDF. To fix this, you will need to add new, continuous page numbers to the entire combined PDF after you have finished merging all the files together.