How to merge PDFs so the pages stay in the right order
Combine several PDFs in the browser, drag the file order from first-page thumbnails, and keep each document's pages intact.
Updated 2026-09-21
Merging PDFs is a clerk's job that software still gets wrong: files appear in the order you selected them, not the order you meant, and a scanned page can rotate or drop its text layer if the tool rasterises everything.
Batonbox Merge PDF joins files with pdf-lib in your browser. First-page thumbnails show what you are stacking; drag to set the order. Nothing is uploaded for this tool.
Order is the whole product
Add every file, then look at the covers. Drag the one that should be page 1 to the front. Selection order from the file picker is not a contract — some browsers sort by name, some by click order.
If you only need chapters 2 and 5 from a longer PDF, extract those pages first, then merge the extracts. Merging whole books and deleting pages afterwards is slower and easier to mess up.
What a merge keeps
A proper merge copies pages. Text stays selectable, links stay clickable, and existing rotation is preserved. You do not get a new OCR pass and you do not lose vector drawings.
Encrypted files have to be unlocked first. A password-protected PDF will not merge until you can open it. Forms and some annotations survive; a few interactive features are flattened by the library and will not stay “live.”
Size after a merge
The result is roughly the sum of the inputs, plus a little wrapper. If the combined file is too large to email, compress after you are happy with the page order — lossless first, image recompress only if you must.
Step by step
- 1
Add at least two PDFs
Drop them on the workbench. Confirm each cover is the document you think it is.
- 2
Drag the order
Put the cover file first, appendices last. Play through the thumbs once the way a reader would.
- 3
Run and open the result
Check the first page, a page from the middle of the second file, and the last page. Confirm nothing is upside down.
- 4
Send on or compress
If the file is huge, open Compress PDF next. Do not merge a second time to “fix” size.
Questions
- Does merging PDFs upload them?
- No. Merge PDF runs in the browser with pdf-lib. The files stay on your device.
- Can I merge a PDF and a set of images?
- Convert the images to PDF first (JPG to PDF or Images to PDF), then merge those PDFs with the rest.
- Why is a page blank after the merge?
- Usually a failed decode of a damaged page, or a file that was still encrypted. Open that source PDF on its own; if it is blank there too, the source is the problem.