# Merge two PDF files output by LaTeX?

I would like to (re)submit a paper with a short cover letter, explaining the changes I have made. However, the journal only allows me to upload one file. As the main article will use the journal style class, and so forth, it's not really practical to use the 1st page for the letter (or is it? Could I reset the page number etc. etc.??)

Instead, could I create, say, two PDF files (one the letter, the other the article) and then somehow merge them together?

• Hi Matthew, welcome to tex.SX! If you tell us what operating system you're using then that would help as the ways to do this vary from OS to OS. Jan 10 '11 at 21:45
• Well, I have a very up-to-date version of MikTex on Windows, and also a rather old Linux system at work... Jan 10 '11 at 22:15
• Would zipping the two files together into one archive suffice, or has your one uploaded file got to be a pdf?
– Edd
Jan 11 '11 at 21:46

Create the separate documents separately and merge them with a PDF utility. Semantically speaking, I feel this is the way to go rather than futzing with the document settings. After all, what you are submitting is not one "document" but a set of them.

Edit: This is an important question that has been asked more than once. It's also not exactly TeX-related. So I'm community-wikifying my answer so it can be improved and made definitive.

### LaTeX

use Herbert's answer: the pdfpages package

\documentclass{article}% or something else
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=-]{paper1}
\includepdf[pages=-]{paper2}

\end{document}


You could also keep the document page sizes by adding a option:

\includepdf[pages=-,fitpapaer]{paper1}
\includepdf[pages=-,fitpaper]{paper2}


And not to repeat yourself use this:

\includepdfset{pages=-,fitpaper}
\includepdf{paper1}
\includepdf{paper2}
\includepdf{paper3}
\includepdf[fitpaper=false]{paper4} // you can add document specific options
\includepdf{paper5}
\includepdf{paper6}
\includepdfset{} // to put default values back


### Command Line

• pdftk

 $pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output 123.pdf  • GhostScript $ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf source1.pdf source2.pdf source3.pdf etc.pdf


(via Macworld)

• PDFJAM is a suite of scripts that uses LaTeX and pdfpages on the backend.

 $pdfjoin foo1.pdf foo2.pdf --outfile bar.pdf  (via Uwe Hermann) • stapler is a pure Python alternative to pdftk. $ stapler cat in1.pdf in2.pdf out.pdf

• PyMuPDF is a Python binding for MuPDF – “a lightweight PDF and XPS viewer”.

   \$ python -m fitz join -o output.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf


### GUI

This question is very similar although the questioner didn't realize it.

• Beat me to it on pdftk; a very useful little program for mucking about with PDFs. Jan 10 '11 at 21:45
• I'll accept this; actually, I guess I should have search harder, as that other question was almost identical to mine! Many thanks to all. Jan 10 '11 at 22:16
• Am I the only one who has trouble with the output of pdftk working well with ghostcript? Ghostscript complains that pdftk output violates the PDF spec. I prefer the pdfjam scripts, which provide similar commandline functionality, but uses pdflatex/pdfpages for its backend. (For that matter, gs can itself combine PDFs from the commandline.) Jan 10 '11 at 22:25
• Note that pdfpages removes all hyperlinks and other PDF annotations from the included PDFs. Jul 6 '11 at 19:37
• Even if we use fitpaper option for includepdf (pdfpages) it will consider the first page as the page size for all the paages. – Aug 22 '20 at 12:21

Package pdfpagesmay help

\documentclass{article}% or something else
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=...]{paper1}
\includepdf[pages=...]{paper2}

\end{document}

• This works fine as well (once I noticed the typo: "includepdf" not "inlcudepdf"!) Actually, maybe this is the "nicest" way to do a cover letter, as then I can just include the PDF file of paper at the end. Jan 11 '11 at 15:47
• @Matthew: I had a knot in my fingers ... :-)
– user2478
Jan 11 '11 at 15:49
• I have clickable links in the PDF that I want to include. They are gone in the merged PDF. How can I maintain these links? ... Ah ok, seems like it's not possible. Mar 10 at 15:35
• @CGFoX: pdftk seems to keep internal links. Jun 23 at 12:41

If you have Ghostscript installed, you might also join the two separate PDF files in one by issuing a command such as this:

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf input1.pdf input2.pdf