Easy way to concatenate PDF files in Ubuntu Linux

Posted on April 12, 2009 by João

One liner:

gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf [...] lastfile.pdf

49 thoughts on “Easy way to concatenate PDF files in Ubuntu Linux”

pornstar pocket pussy on June 22, 2018 at 9:38 am said:

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idontlikesocialiace on June 2, 2015 at 11:40 am said:

This made my day!
Appalbarry on May 23, 2015 at 7:02 pm said:

Yes, it’s May 2015 and once again this did (almost) exactly what I wanted. Fast and easy.
squaregoldfish on February 23, 2015 at 7:04 pm said:

*like* :)
Peng Zhang on November 26, 2014 at 7:34 am said:

This solutions is so cool. Many thanks to Doei!
Juan Pablo Lomeli (@paburu) on December 19, 2013 at 5:35 pm said:

I wish I could give you a nice hand shake fine gentleman, thank you for that info worked great on Debian wheezy
S Hodge on November 2, 2013 at 6:50 pm said:

Easily banged 40 files together into a reasonable file size. Thanks for sharing what you know.
Markus on September 11, 2013 at 10:55 pm said:

Works great!
Pingback: Concatenating pdf files the easy way « twm’s blog
harry on June 12, 2013 at 8:52 pm said:

to know how, that’s the point …., thank you
ALLO on April 30, 2013 at 4:11 am said:

DANKE
Fred Striley on March 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm said:

So, cool ! Thanks ! I just removed the PAPERSIZE option and concatenated pdfs of varying widths beautifully.
alaissham on March 18, 2013 at 4:59 am said:

I was using
$cat file1.pdf file2.pdf >> output.pdf
in fedora, but in ubuntu it doesn’t work as expected.

But, this page helped me a lot to save my time.

Thanks.
Joao on February 14, 2013 at 1:25 pm said:

perfect ;-)

papers + SI never alone anymore ;-)
max on February 5, 2013 at 12:37 pm said:

works fine for me
Alberto Martínez on January 6, 2013 at 11:29 pm said:

I have used same command several times, google always bring me here.
Command works great.
Thanks for your time posting it!
carcar on November 14, 2012 at 6:05 pm said:

Why not:
pdftk file_a.pdf file_b.pdf file_c.pdf cat file_d.pdf output file_abc.pdf
or even, with the classic bash trick
pdftk file_[a-d].pdf output file_abcd.pdf
PS: unfortunately xpdf does not work well in release 12-X
Jorge on July 25, 2012 at 11:45 am said:

Thanks a lot!!! :):)
John on July 10, 2012 at 1:42 pm said:

Obrigado. Got me out of a hole
Roger on June 12, 2012 at 5:50 pm said:

Being an amature with Linux I am a bit nervous of command line work however I tried this to concat 8.pdf pages and it worked very well. Thank you
Todd Partridge (Gen2ly) on June 4, 2012 at 6:20 pm said:
Thank you. This is a big help to me because one of pdftk’s requirements requires an older version of gcc be compile. This helps quite a bit. I ended putting this in my .bashrc in case I needed it later:
```
pdfcat () {
  gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
  -sOutputFile=concatenated.pdf "$@"
}
```
mamozzi on March 12, 2012 at 4:32 pm said:

In comments someone suggest pdftk.
It’s great but if we have protected pdf files it doesn’t work while gs does.
joa on February 29, 2012 at 7:59 pm said:

coolest so far on merging pdf!!! wow
daves dildo on December 17, 2011 at 1:04 pm said:

David D Short -> wanker.

It does produce selectable text depending on input files. Text input from latex generated files -> selectable text.
useful! on December 1, 2011 at 7:11 am said:

Thanks!
Pablo on November 11, 2011 at 5:23 pm said:

Valeu, funcionou muito bem! / Thanks, worked like a charm!
David Kordahl on October 13, 2011 at 9:02 am said:

Thanks so much! This worked perfectly.
João on September 14, 2011 at 2:29 pm said:

Dear Davids,

You can get A4 paper size by changing the appropriate variable (-sPAPERSIZE=a4). In my case I didn’t really need specific paper size, I only wanted a few plots glued together.

As for not working, likely there was a problem with your installation. Regarding quality, it again depends on what you are looking for. My threshold was pretty low ;)

But it seems you figured it out already so, great! Thanks for the pdftk example!
David (another) on September 11, 2011 at 7:05 pm said:

David, you still haven’t said what the problem was, but that’s ok; seems you found the solution; great!
So the problem was with your installation?!?
Meaning that your comment “Doesn’t work. Plus, it should use A4 by default. This is 2011.” was just a … what? Rhetorical rant?
Ok!
David D Short on September 11, 2011 at 6:47 am said:

What the hell is wrong with it indeed?

Let’s answer that question (pretending that it wasn’t purely rhetorical, and ignoring your silly copycat insults).

First solution: reinstall GhostScript. Result: it does now generate a PDF!

However, the text is no longer selectable, implying that it has been converted to vector graphics. The lossiness of the JPEG graphics seems much higher (as can be seen from the reduced filesize).

Second solution: use convert from ImageMagick. Results: horrible. The text is converted to bitmap.

Third solution: install pdftk.

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf […] lastfile.pdf cat output output.pdf

Results: perfect.
David (another) on September 10, 2011 at 4:24 pm said:

Since April 2009, a lot of people had put it to work, so what the hell is wrong with it? If you can’t put it to work, ask for help but don’t blame the post. So, if you’re not half-brained you’re certainly “an enormous, presumptuous wanker”.
David on September 10, 2011 at 3:39 pm said:

What an enormous, presumptuous wanker.
David (another) on September 10, 2011 at 3:28 pm said:

@David, yes it does; try to use that part of the body that some call brain.
David on September 10, 2011 at 2:57 am said:

Doesn’t work.

Plus, it should use A4 by default. This is 2011.
Eduardo on August 8, 2011 at 1:15 am said:

The quality using gs is hundred times greater than using convert.
Roy on July 27, 2011 at 7:54 pm said:

Thanks, really works, and save me a lot of hassle
charlielogroño on July 17, 2011 at 3:06 pm said:

Thanks very much, it worked perfectly. Muito obrigado!
frederico schardong on June 28, 2011 at 1:12 pm said:

BIoquímicos representando o país? Fico tranquilo =)

ótimo tutorial, me ajudou muito!
kadm on June 6, 2011 at 1:35 am said:

Formidable! Y no hay que instalar nada. Gracias!
mr anon on May 31, 2011 at 4:29 pm said:

tnx, also nice mustaches
Pingback: Concatenating PDFs « Linux Sagas
Chris on September 16, 2010 at 5:19 am said:

That was simple – thank you!
Kim on August 20, 2010 at 9:33 pm said:

Just to complement, it allows to process well-formed file names. I had slides named MMM1 thru MMM16, and it accepted MMM*.pdf .

Thanks a lot for the tip!
habrisker on June 3, 2010 at 6:02 pm said:

Thanks!

Muchas Gracias!
geoff on February 25, 2010 at 7:19 pm said:

works for me thank you!
adityabheemarao on July 19, 2009 at 2:05 pm said:

cool! thanks.
works!
Paulo on May 6, 2009 at 8:20 pm said:

Uma solução ainda mais simples:

convert -page a4 page1.pdf page2.pdf …. all_pages.pdf

(o “convert” faz parte do ImageMagik)
Andre Martins on May 6, 2009 at 12:37 pm said:

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ALTAMENTE C******
JoaoTeixeira on April 13, 2009 at 10:44 pm said:

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já meteste no what have i done?

TA ALTAMENTE!!