Merge all pdf files from one folder

Question

I have 250 pdf files in one folder that I want to merge in one document. The order does not matter. Is there a simple way of doing it?

I can use PDF-Shuffler as suggested here https://askubuntu.com/a/2805/247771 but the progam hangs for 10 minutes befor it has loaded all the pdfs.

Can I achive this maybe with an inline command like

pdftk *.pdf output mergedfiles.pdf

?

Solution 1

I would use pdfunite. It is nice and simple. cd to your directory. Then use something like this:

pdfunite *.pdf all.pdf

(Before running, make sure you don't already have a file called all.pdf in that directory.)

Solution 2

Thanks to steeldriver who showed me that this is doing the job:

pdftk *.pdf cat output mergedfiles.pdf

Solution 3

You can use qpdf as pdftk is not available in Ubuntu Bionic:

qpdf --empty --pages *.pdf -- out.pdf

Solution 4

1. sudo apt-get install gs
2. gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=target.pdf -dBATCH xx.pdf xx.pdf xx.pdf ...
3. you can get all filenames through ls -l *.pdf | awk command

Wish it helps . ^_^

Solution 5

You can use pdftools:

pdftools --input-dir dir_with_pdfs --output output.pdf

View more solutions

Comments

[steeldriver]

Your pdftk command is just missing a cat I think: pdftk *.pdf cat output mergedfiles.pdf

[Adam]

@steeldriver if you write an answer I would mark it as chekced.

[MERose]

On Ubuntu 16.04 I get E: Package 'gs' has no installation candidate.

[edesz]

Using pdfunite version 0.68.0 with Ubuntu 18.10, I had to use pdfunite * all.pdf. When I tried pdfunite *.pdf all.pdf, it gave me the following error I/O Error: Couldn't open file '*.pdf': No such file or directory. Syntax Error: Could not merge damaged documents ('*.pdf') .

[parisa]

Worked in Ubuntu 18.04. Thanks.

[rob grune]

I have Kubuntu 19.10. this pdftk does not work.