LibreOffice Draw is a program very similar to Microsoft Publisher. Its main purpose is to create publishable documents like brochures, publications, and other highly structured or formatted documents. One of the main side benefits of this software application is that it can be used to work with PDF documents, including editing, merging, extracting pages, etc. In this short Knowledge base article, we will show you how you can merge multiple PDF documents into one, as well as, extract pages from existing PDF documents into new ones.
Video Demonstration
Check out the following video for a walk through or follow the step by step guide below the video.
Step by Step Guide
Merging PDF Documents
- Open LibreOffice Draw
- Go to File and then Open
- Select your first file that you would like to merge with other files
- Using the same steps, open the next file you would like to merge
- Using your mouse, position the second file in a manner that allows you to see the first file's page list (The page list is the section on the left side of the document which shows you the page previews Note: if you do not see the Page List on the left side, go to the "View" menu and make sure "Page Pane" is selected.)
- On the second file, click on the page (or pages by holding down the shift key and clicking each page) you would like to merge into the first document
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Drag those pages over to the page list on the first document, positioning them in the order you would like them to appear in the final document. Note: You can re-arrange pages by dragging them up or down in the page list.
- Do this for each document that you would like to merge pages from.
- When you are done, the final step is to Export the first document with all the pages.
- Go to File > Export As. You will have two options in the sub-menu to choose from. Export as PDF gives you several options related to PDF documents, including PDF type, bookmarks, and a few others. Export Directly as PDF simply opens the location dialog box to allow you to choose the location and filename and then export. You can experiment with both.
- Once you've named the file and chosen where you would like to save the newly merged file, click Save.
Extracting Pages from PDF Documents
- Open LibreOffice Draw
- Go to File and then Open
- Select the file you will be extracting pages from
- Once open go to File > Export As > Export As PDF
- Select the radio button next to Pages in the dialog box that pops up
- Type the numbers of the pages in the order you would like them extracted using a comma between individual pages a hyphen for page ranges. For example, in a ten page document I might want the following: 1,3,6-8,2. This will give me page 1 and 3, then pages 6 through 8, and finally page 2 in that order.
- Click Export
- Determine where you would like to save it and how you would like to name it and then click Save.