How to Scan Multiple Pages Into One PDF (Free)

A contract is twenty pages. A mortgage file is forty. A separate PDF for each page defeats the point: a multi-page document should come out as one PDF you can email, file or sign as one object. You can scan multiple pages into one PDF with your phone, for free, without extra apps, and without a merge step afterwards.

How do I scan multiple pages into one PDF?

Open the Scan PDF tool on your phone and tap Open camera. Hold the first page under the camera until it captures, then swap in the next page; the scanner notices the change and captures again. Repeat for every page, review them, and tap Save PDF to get one multi-page PDF.

1. 1Open Scan PDF and tap Open camera.
2. 2Let the first page capture automatically.
3. 3Swap in the next page; it captures again.
4. 4Tap the thumbnail to review and reorder.
5. 5Tap Save PDF to save all pages as one file.

Scan all the pages in one session

The trick is not to save after every page. Every capture goes into the same working document, so the whole stack becomes one file at the end. Here is the detailed version:

1. 1Open the Scan PDF tool in your phone’s browser and tap Open camera. Leave the mode on Document.
2. 2Put the first page flat on a dark surface. When the outline turns green, the page is captured by itself (Auto capture is on by default). The counter on the thumbnail at the bottom left goes up by one.
3. 3Lift the page away and put the next one in exactly the same spot. Once the view has changed, the scanner re-arms and captures the new page when it is steady. You do not need to touch the screen between pages.
4. 4Keep going until the stack is done. If a page is a double-sided sheet, flip it and capture the back straight after the front.
5. 5Tap the thumbnail to open the review screen and swipe through the pages. Fix anything crooked, sideways or dim (see below).
6. 6Tap Save PDF, check the name, page size and file size, and tap Save as PDF. Download it or share it from the phone.

Auto capture or the shutter?

For a clean stack of printed pages, leave Auto capture on and just feed pages; it takes a couple of seconds per page. Turn Auto capture off with the button at the top of the camera when the scanner keeps firing too early, for example on a cluttered desk or with glossy pages that reflect light. Then the outline still shows you what it found, and you tap the shutter when you are ready. If a capture finds no page edges at all, the crop screen opens immediately so you can set the corners by hand.

Scanning a bound document or a book

For a stapled report you can unbind, scan sheets one by one. For anything you cannot take apart, switch to Book mode: line the spine up with the dashed centre line, and each shot of an open spread is split into a left page and a right page, in reading order. A 200-page book becomes 100 shots instead of 200.

Put the pages in the right order

The order you capture pages in is the order they appear in the PDF, but you can change it before saving. On the review screen, open Reorder: every page appears as a thumbnail with a drag handle in its corner. Drag a page by its handle to its new position. On a long document it is often quicker to tap a page and use the First, Earlier, Later and Last buttons.

Fix individual pages without rescanning the whole stack

Keep the file size in check

A thirty-page scan adds up quickly. Set the size when you save instead of compressing later: File size has High, Medium (the default, good for email) and Small (for upload portals with tight limits). The size is shown when the PDF is ready, so you can save again at a smaller setting if it is still too large. Two more things help: the B&W filter for plain text pages, and A4 or Letter page size so every page has the same dimensions.

Make it searchable while you are at it

A forty-page scan you cannot search is painful to use. Leave Recognize text (OCR) ticked on the save screen and choose the document language. Text recognition runs on your phone and adds a hidden text layer to every page, so you can search the PDF for a name or clause and copy text out of it. It takes longer on long documents, so plug in the phone for a big file.