PDFsam 6.0.1

PDFsam is a desktop utility for assembling and dividing PDF documents on Windows, macOS and Linux. Its free, open-source edition, PDFsam Basic, works with existing pages: it merges documents, separates them into smaller files, extracts selected pages and changes their orientation. Processing takes place on your computer without uploading the PDFs, and Basic adds no watermark or file-size limit.

Merging PDFs, bookmarks and forms

The Merge tool builds one PDF from an ordered list of input files. You can include each document in full or enter a different selection of pages for each source. Comma-separated selections combine individual pages and ranges, including a range that continues to the end of a file. This lets you assemble relevant material without first creating a separate extract from every source.

PDFsam also controls what happens to the documents’ navigation and interactive forms. Bookmarks can be combined, discarded or placed beneath a new tree with an entry for each input document. A clickable table of contents can be added at the beginning of the output. For AcroForms, you can discard the forms, combine them or rename fields whose names would otherwise conflict in the merged document.

Splitting by pages, bookmarks or size

Splitting starts with a single PDF and produces several documents. Page-based rules can create one file per page, break after odd or even pages, use specified page numbers or divide the document after every chosen number of pages.

Existing bookmarks provide another set of boundaries. Choose a level in the bookmark tree and PDFsam splits at the pages those bookmarks identify; a regular expression can restrict which bookmarks are used. For a bookmarked book, this can separate chapters according to their existing outline. Output filenames can incorporate the bookmark name or a sequential file number.

The size-based splitter instead aims for a chosen size in kilobytes or megabytes. Its results are approximate, so this setting should not be treated as an exact limit on every output file.

Page extraction

Extraction keeps selected pages rather than dividing the entire document. PDFsam accepts single page numbers, ranges, open-ended ranges and the word “last” to identify the final page. Selected ranges can be saved together or as separate PDFs for each range. You can also add several input files and apply the same page selection to all of them in one run.

Scan interleaving

Mix alternates pages from two or more PDFs. This suits a single-sided scanner that has produced one file for the front sides and another for the backs: interleaving reconstructs the page sequence within one document.

Each input has a pace setting that determines how many consecutive pages are taken before moving to the next file. A Reverse option reads an input from back to front when the stack was scanned in the opposite order. Page ranges can restrict the material taken from each file, so mixing need not consume every page of every input.

Inserting the same pages at intervals

PDFsam Basic can insert the same PDF pages repeatedly within another document. You supply the destination document and a second PDF containing the material to repeat, choose the relevant pages and set the interval between insertions. The output can therefore place a recurring page after every set of pages without adding each copy individually to a merge list.

Page rotation

The rotation tool saves orientation changes into the PDF. Choose a rotation of 90, 180 or 270 degrees and apply it to all pages, odd pages, even pages or selected ranges. Several PDFs can be processed together, while the page selection determines which parts of each document are turned.

PDFsam Basic, Visual and Enhanced

The tools in Visual and Enhanced are not part of PDFsam Basic.