How to Build a PDF With Automator on a Mac

The Automator tool includes support for building PDFs.

The Mac OS X operating system, which runs on Apple's line of desktop and laptop computers, includes a tool called Automator that lets users write and run scripts to perform different actions within the Mac environment. For example, you could create an Automator script that will grab certain files on your local hard drive and combine them into a single PDF file. After your Automator script builds the master PDF, it will open it in the Preview application.

Things You'll Need

• Mac running OS X 10.5 or later

Instructions

1. Click on the "Finder" icon in the dock to open a new Finder window.

2. Highlight the "Applications" tab on the left side of the Finder window and then double-click on the "Automator" icon.

3. Select "Workflow" or "Custom" from the list of script types and press the "Choose" button.

4. Highlight the "Files & Folders" tab from the "Library" list on the left side of the Automator window.

5. Drag the entry labeled "Get Selected Finder Items" into the script layout on the right side of the window.

6. Switch to the "PDFs" tab and drag the "Combine PDF Pages" entry into the script layout.

7. Go back to the "Files & Folders" tab and drag the "Open Finder Items" entry to the bottom of the script layout.

8. Select the files that you want to combine and then press the "Run" button in the Automator window to build a PDF with them.

References

• Apple Support: Mac 101: Automator
• Mac OS X Hints: Use Automator to Combine PDFs