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Capt. Pat

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 25, 2006
32
5
I have a PDF document that contains several partial pages. If I print the document these pages have content on the top or bottom half of the paper. The content is music, so it's not as simple as cutting and pasting text. I'm looking for a PDF editor that will support merging two of the partial pages into a full page.
 
You could actually do that in Pages with the Edit Mask tool. Bring both PDFs into a blank Pages document, use Edit Mask to crop out the parts you don't want, then align them, print to PDF, boom.
When I drag a PDF document into Pages it imports just the first page, am I doing it wrong? To be clear I have a single PDF document with multiple pages, some of these pages only take up half a sheet when printed, I want to reflow the document so that when it prints each sheet is full. In a word processing document, it would be like removing page breaks.
 
"I have a single PDF document with multiple pages, some of these pages only take up half a sheet when printed, I want to reflow the document so that when it prints each sheet is full. In a word processing document, it would be like removing page breaks."

Another Fishrrman "I always do things the hard way" observation:

Why not
- open a word processor app
- import and arrange all the pdf files so that the text is in proper order and fills the pages
and then...
- EXPORT the WP file as a pdf file?
 
The MacMost video answers a different problem. The content is sheet music, not text, seems like PDF software should be able to manage this.
 
You should have said "sheet music" in your original post.

There are probably various 3rd-party apps out there that are designed to facilitate handling of sheet music on the Mac...
 
The content is sheet music, not text, seems like PDF software should be able to manage this.
Is the sheet music images inside the PDF? If so you could extract the images, crop and create a new document via Pages, Word, etc. and print to PDF. Much the same as @JonnyMacx86 has said.

Alternatively, I am sure you can manage this with a PDF editor (not an annotator like Preview). Have you tried any? E.g. Nitro, PDF Expert, Adobe Acrobat, Foxit. Editors are not free, though some will have free trial.
 
Pages is going to do this just fine. But key is putting it in Page Layout mode, an option in the File Menu. Now instead of working like a word processor, it works like DTP software.

Then you can drag these pages split in the wrong place, onto individual pages and link the splits pages back together again on single pages. For example if one your sheet music pages is split at 50%, you can pull that up to the upper half of page, put the lower 50% onto the bottom half of a page and now you have the page of sheet music reassembled on a normal page. Repeat for all of the "broken" pages you have.

You'll have to do this manually for each page, so it will be a pain if you have a LOT of pages. But it will also easily work and you can be very precise in lining them up. You can also "Edit Mask" to trim unwanted stuff off so that what you end up then printing (or "printing" to another PDF file from Pages) is only the sheet music on regular paper as you seem to want it.

You seem to have a problem in #4 that is resolved by "showing thumbnails" in Preview and then dragging each page thumbnail into Pages and putting it where you want it. Think of this like the thumbnail pages are puzzle pieces and you have to reassemble the puzzle... or- in this case- you are making a bunch of probably 2-piece puzzles.

Else any paint/image program that can import PDF files is going to work too, OR you can open this file in something like Preview, export the pages as .png or .tif files and then merge them back together as images instead of PDFs in any app that works with images.
 
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I use Forscore it is amazing but it doesn't do what I want to do.

I've tried PDF Pen, PDF Gear, and several other PDF software and haven't found a solution. Seems like this should be easy but I haven't figured it out. I've not tried Acrobat as I'm unwilling to pay the asking price.

I'll give Pages another go as suggested by @HobeSoundDarryl.
 
If I'm understanding your problem correctly... that some kind of PDF scan of sheet music is broken at page breaks instead of properly aligned and thus a chunk of a score in on the lower portion of one page and continues on the upper portion of the next page... the remedy I offered in #13 will definitely work. It just requires some time & effort to basically "realign" 2 PDF pages onto one page in Page Layout Mode to get each broken page reassembled onto a single page(s). You'll likely use Page Layout Mode, "edit mask" and "group" (what was 2 broken pages together) to do this very well.

Once you have all of the music "corrected" that way, you could then "print" to a new PDF file and it will result in a PDF file without the score breaks anymore. Or if the ultimate goal is to print to paper, that will work too.

Hopefully it's not a LOT of pages improperly offset, as each correction will take several steps and thus you could spend hours correcting them- maybe DAYS if it's a LOT of pages- but this will work... as would rendering the entire PDF as individual image files and then reconnecting 2 broken images onto a page so it can print as one now-reconnected image.

Much like having a paper photograph cut in half (and thus now on 2 "pages"), you are basically digitally gluing 2 broken parts back together again.
 
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Pages is going to do this just fine. But key is putting it in Page Layout mode, an option in the File Menu. Now instead of working like a word processor, it works like DTP software.

Then you can drag these pages split in the wrong place, onto individual pages and link the splits pages back together again on single pages. For example if one your sheet music pages is split at 50%, you can pull that up to the upper half of page, put the lower 50% onto the bottom half of a page and now you have the page of sheet music reassembled on a normal page. Repeat for all of the "broken" pages you have.

You'll have to do this manually for each page, so it will be a pain if you have a LOT of pages. But it will also easily work and you can be very precise in lining them up. You can also "Edit Mask" to trim unwanted stuff off so that what you end up then printing (or "printing" to another PDF file from Pages) is only the sheet music on regular paper as you seem to want it.

You seem to have a problem in #4 that is resolved by "showing thumbnails" in Preview and then dragging each page thumbnail into Pages and putting it where you want it. Think of this like the thumbnail pages are puzzle pieces and you have to reassemble the puzzle... or- in this case- you are making a bunch of probably 2-piece puzzles.

Else any paint/image program that can import PDF files is going to work too, OR you can open this file in something like Preview, export the pages as .png or .tif files and then merge them back together as images instead of PDFs in any app that works with images.
This works, thanks.
 
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