Placing plots into multiple page pdf document

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G'day,
I'm a bit stuck at a simple question: how can I create a single pdf file with multiple plots and pages? Multiple page is what I need. I could not find a solution to this simple task in the Internet.
Thanks

Accepted Answer

Jonathan Epperl
Jonathan Epperl on 8 Nov 2012
I don't think that Matlab can create multi-page pdfs for you, you'll have to do that yourself. pdfsam http://www.pdfsam.org is free and does just that.
If you want to do it only occasionally, then you can use the Matlab figure window to export to pdf, and the pdfsam GUI to merge them into a single pdf.
If you want to do it in an automated way from the commandline, then you can use Matlab's print command or one of the many much better functions from the FEX (e.g. http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629-exportfig) and then pdfsam's console interface to merge them. You can call the console interface from the Matlab command line either by
!command
or
system('command')
As a third option, you could generate and compile a latex file from the Matlab command line, that's probably what I would do, but it depends on what you're comfortable with.
Btw, this is all assuming you're on Windows, if you're on a Mac, then preview.app can do the merging, you don't need pdfsam. For Linux, I'm sure, there is something similar.
  2 Comments
Jonathan Epperl
Jonathan Epperl on 8 Nov 2012
Look what I just found in the documentation of export_fig:
-append - option indicating that if the file (pdfs only) already
exists, the figure is to be appended as a new page, instead
of being overwritten (default).
So now this offers you the 4th and probably easiest option!
Aleg
Aleg on 13 Nov 2012
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks a lot for the answer. It works. :)

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More Answers (3)

Oliver Woodford
Oliver Woodford on 23 Nov 2012
The append_pdfs function can concatenate separate pdf files into a single document in MATLAB.

jwiix
jwiix on 30 Mar 2016
I had the same question. the best alternative I came up with programmatically is to use postscript, this allows you to use the append option within the print command:
print(fig_handle, '-dpsc', '-append', 'D:\output_dir\output_file.ps')
if you really require a pdf then you can utilise ps2pdf.com or equivalent to convert

Nikhil Sapre
Nikhil Sapre on 10 Nov 2021
Edited: Nikhil Sapre on 10 Nov 2021
Release 2021b now supports exporting to a multipage pdf using the exportgraphics function

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