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First, a refresher on how to create a PDF in the Mac OS.

Any printable document in your Mac (and this applies to operating systems prior to Leopard) can quickly be made into a PDF. To do so, open the document, go to File > Print and then select “Save as PDF.” Name your document and click the Save button. Voila, a PDF.

The New PDF Options: combining, deleting pages, and rearranging pages using Preview

Preview, a program that comes preinstalled in the Applications folder on a Mac, has expanded its PDF features under the Leopard OS. You can now combine multiple PDFs, delete or add pages to a PDF, and rearrange pages in a PDF. This is a great way to organize your PDFs into related topics.

Here are the basics

• Open the PDF in Preview.
• Turn on the Sidebar. Either go to View>Sidebar
  OR click the Sidebar icon in the toolbar. The PDF will appear in the sidebar.

To add a PDF:

• Open PDF number one in Preview and turn on the Sidebar.
• Open PDF number two in Preview and turn on the Sidebar.
• Select a page (or pages) from the Sidebar of one document and drag it (or them) directly into the Sidebar of the other document.
• This can be done with multiple PDFs. Also, you can open more than one PDF into a single Preview window by selecting them and dragging them onto the Preview program icon in your Doc.

To rearrange the pages within a PDF:

• Select the page in the sidebar and drag it to towards its new location.
• A red horizontal bar will appear indicating when you can release the mouse button to place the page into that location.
• To delete a page from a PDF, select the page in the sidebar and hit the delete key.

When finished, name and save the PDF.

Here are some additional tips:

If a document is already a PDF and you click on the print command, you’ll see there is an option under PDF to open it in Preview.

I generally put the PDFs that I want to work with onto my desktop. I then select them all and drag them onto the Preview application icon in my Dock. To select multiple contiguous documents, hold the shift key down and drag across the documents you’d like to select. To select non-contiguous documents, hold the command key and click each.

If you don’t have Preview in your Dock, and you’d like to add it, first locate the program. Go to your Applications folder, and scroll down until your see Preview. Then drag the program directly to your Dock. Remember, this is simply placing a short cut to the program; the program remains in your applications folder.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 2:01 am and is filed under Computer-related, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.