OT - pdf file combiner
 

Is there a good freeware program to merge many pdf files into a single pdf? I tried googling, but there are many possibilities and the first one I tried didn't work on more recent pdfs.

thanks

PDFLab....
 

....is what I use. It's pretty basic, but works quite well.

Here's a link: http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/pdflab/

Try this for the PC http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfsam/

This may be obvious but Adobe Acrobat is the best software I've found for PDFs. I often combine PDF files in order to create some sort of presentation to whomever.

I've been using ScanSoft PDF Professional 4 for the last couple of months to evaluate it for work and have been quite happy with it. It will merge multiple PDF files into one, and it can also merge a mix of files (PDF, Word, Excel) into one PDF. At $80-90, it's a third the price of the standard version of Acrobat.

I use pdftk:

http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

The OP did say freeware, and I don't think a $450 program counts.

But don't get me wrong-I really like Acrobat (especially when I am scanning in all of my old notes; it's really slick)

I second pdftk.exe It's a great program that runs on almost anything. The only drawback is that it is run from a command line.

Once you know what you're doing, that's a feature, not a drawback. ^

I had tried pdftk. Very nice, except it treats some files as encrypted that are not encrypted. I just tried pdfsam, which has the same issue. Any ideas?

I missed the part about the OP asking for freeware. I might suggest that if you are wanting to use PDF software for casual, personal use, you may want to just download the full version off the net for free. It is along the same line as downloading music which no royalties are collected but I think this is a great way to "test drive" software. I sometimes find (such as the case of Adobe Acrobat) that the software was worth the purchase price.

I use PDF Redirect v2 that I got from Download.com.

Not intuitive, but it works.

Aye :-) I've incorporated it into several scripts I've written and love the fact it is a command line, but others may prefer a GUI. :-)

This isn't freeware, but it's shareware and cheap ($29.90) PDF Split-Merge v2.2 from VeryPDF http://www.verypdf.com/pdfpg/index.html

I've used other PDF products of theirs and have been very happy with them.