Merging and Extracting PDFs with SharePoint Premium

By Microsoft MVP and MCT · Pluralsight Author

Published March 20, 2025 · Learning & Credentials, Microsoft 365, SharePoint

In this video, Drew Madelung presents a detailed exploration of the PDF merge and extract functionality available with SharePoint Premium.

As part of the Ultimate SharePoint Premium Deep Dive Series (Part 11), this tutorial demonstrates how users can efficiently combine multiple PDF documents into a single file or extract specific pages from larger documents without downloading files or using external applications.

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Video Summary

  • PDF Merge and Extract in SharePoint Premium: SharePoint Premium introduces browser-based PDF merge and extract functionalities, making it easier to manage PDFs directly in SharePoint or OneDrive without extra tools.
  • Merging PDFs: To merge PDFs, open the PDF in the browser, click the merge icon, select the files to merge, and create a new combined PDF. This feature allows combining multiple PDFs into one seamlessly.
  • Extracting Pages from PDFs: To extract pages, open the PDF, click the extract icon, select the pages to extract, and create a new file with those selected pages. This is useful for creating new PDFs from specific sections of existing ones.
  • Navigation and File Management: The merge and extract functionalities work in both SharePoint and OneDrive. Users can navigate and manage files across different SharePoint sites using the left rail navigation.
  • Tips for Using Merge and Extract: It’s recommended to update the default file names to avoid confusion. These functionalities are part of the broader SharePoint Premium Deep Dive series, which covers various features in detail.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

Need to merge multiple PDFs into one directly in SharePoint or maybe extract specific pages without downloading the file or using extra tools? With SharePoint Premium, managing PDFs in Microsoft 365 is easier than ever. In this video, part of the Ultimate SharePoint Premium Deep Dive series, Drew Madelung takes a deep dive into the merge and extract PDF functionality. Drew, take it away.

Hello everyone, my name is Drew Madelung, and I’ll be going through part 11 of the Ultimate SharePoint Premium Deep Dive series. We’ll be talking about the PDF merge and extract functionality as part of SharePoint Premium. If you’ve been following along, this is part 11 of the Ultimate SharePoint Premium Deep Dive series, where myself, my friends Vlad and Goken and, will be bringing together over 30 deep dive videos covering everything SharePoint Premium. So I’m sure you’ve followed along to other functionality that comes along with SharePoint Premium.

Today, we’re going to be talking about PDF merge and extract. We’ll be talking about how to merge, how to extract, and some helpful tips for working with the PDF merge and extract functionality. To get started, let’s talk about what PDF merge and extract is. So, what you have today, or if you don’t have SharePoint Premium, what you get with SharePoint Premium now is two new options when opening up PDFs in the browser. PDF merge and extract is a browser-based functionality that, before, you would have in your toolbar up on the top of the file viewer. Once you’ve enabled SharePoint Premium, you have two new functionalities: the merge and extract options. One, you have the two little arrows in there—that’s your merge action. And the one just to the left of that, where you have two pieces of paper and the white arrow—that’s your extract action. Now, these do require the SharePoint Premium pay-as-you-go to be configured. So once you’ve configured it in your tenant, this will become available to you for everyone in your organization.

We’re going to start with a PDF merge. To merge, what you’re going to do is open your PDF in the browser, click the merge icon in the toolbar in the file viewer, and then select the files that you want to merge. You can grab as many files as you like and create a new file with all those pages to build a combined PDF. So, what does a PDF merge look like? I’m going to go out to a browser, and I have a collection of files about SharePoint agents. One’s a quick start guide, one is a SharePoint one-pager. If I go into each of these, you’ll see that this one has a good collection around automation and streamlining my critical business process—what I can do in agents, how I can create them, and how I can share them. That looks like a good agent file. I also have one in here that’s a quick start guide that includes a lot more information about different functionality. If I zoom in a little bit, not too much, you’ll see I have information on how to use SharePoint agents. Now, I want to share this information with just one person or multiple people, but I don’t want to share it in two PDFs. So, I want to merge this information. I’m going to open up this one-pager, open my toolbar, and click the new merge action that I have. Once I click merge, I have a new file picker experience where you’ll see that the file I’ve opened is already pre-selected. Then, I’m going to grab a couple of other files. I’m just going to grab this agents one right here. You’ll see over on the right, once I have it selected, I have this sub-action to show me I’m combining both of these. I’m going to merge both of these files into one. I’ve selected two files to merge, I’m going to click next. You’ll see that on the bottom, we now have a spot to put in a new file name. Let’s call this the “Updated SharePoint Agents Guide.” I click save, and you can see at the bottom a little icon showing merging pages. Then, it’ll show me that my PDF is now ready. I can open that up. If I navigate back, you’ll see I have the new PDF created right here called “Updated SharePoint Agents Guide,” created a few seconds ago. When I open up this file, you’ll see it has those three pages of the agent files that have all been brought together into a single file. Give it a quick refresh. Here we go. You’ll see I have three pages now in here—my first two along with that long quick start guide—all brought together into a single file. Awesome, right? So, that’s how I can do a merge for PDFs.

Let’s talk about extraction. Next on our list, we have a PDF extract. Let’s say we have a scenario where we have a file and we want to extract pages from that PDF. We follow a very similar process. We’re going to open the PDF in the browser, click the extract icon in the file view experience, and select the pages that we want to extract. Once I select those, I’m going to create a new file with the pages that I’ve selected. Let’s take a look at the PDF extract. I’m going to go back into my OneDrive, and I have a file here called “M365 and SharePoint Productivity.” This is the organization I’m working with, and this file is a collection of a bunch of stuff about my organization, but it highlights different functions that I’ve been working with around SharePoint advanced management and SharePoint migrations. Let’s say, as I go down here, if I look at some of the SharePoint advanced management information, this might be information I want to pull out and create my own SharePoint advanced management section. So, what I can do is go up to the top and say extract. I want a new PDF. This is a lot of information—it’s got migration, it’s got SAM in it, it’s got some externalization, it’s got who I, the company I work with. I want to extract this and just have it be about SAM. So, I’m going to grab one thing, operativity. Let’s grab my header, let’s grab the top file, then I’m going to grab my SAM PDF slides in here that go about our SAM deployment process. You’ll see I have nine pages selected for this overall PDF. I’m going to click up in the top left, and click extract. When I click extract, it’s going to give me the action, a very similar file picker experience. I can choose where I want to extract this file. I can keep this in my files demo folder and say this is going to be “SharePoint Advanced Management Strategy Deck.” I can enter that name, click save, and you’ll see it set extracting pages. My PDF is ready. I opened it up, and I very quickly extracted multiple pages from one PDF into another. So, I ended up with a single file that had the new set of PDF pages that I wanted to extract. Oh, that’s pretty cool.

So, what else is there to know about the PDF merge and extract functionality? Some of the small tips I have for this are that it does work in SharePoint and OneDrive. I showed this in OneDrive, but it’s the same experience in SharePoint. This is working with PDFs inside of Microsoft 365. You can navigate when you’re working with these files when you’re working with the merge and extract. You can work within “My Files” to make sure you know that’s OneDrive. When I am selecting multiple files or extracting to a location, my files will be in OneDrive, and I can navigate using that left rail for other SharePoint sites too. So, I can merge files from multiple SharePoint sites or extract them to other SharePoint sites using this left rail functionality when I’m doing PDF merge and extract. As you saw, it will provide a default file name. I recommend that you update that, as it could lead to some confusion based on the files that you were creating. Some quick tips for working with PDF merge and extract.

This was just part 11 of the overall Ultimate SharePoint Premium Deep Dive series. Make sure you subscribe to this channel, look in the playlist, and check the comments. Thank you from me, Drew, Vlad, and Gokan for following along in this series. Thank you so much, Drew, for that amazing explanation. To everyone watching, I hope you enjoyed this deep dive, part of the Ultimate SharePoint Premium Deep Dive series. Be sure to check out the playlist on your screen right now to catch all the released videos, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel so you’re notified as soon as new videos get released. I can’t wait to see you in the next one.