How to Merge PDF Files in WPS Office

Merging PDFs is one of the most common PDF tasks — combine a cover page, a report, and an appendix into one file before sending. WPS Office ships a Merge PDF tool inside its PDF Tools suite that handles this with a visual file list and drag-to-reorder. This guide walks through the steps in WPS Office 2024 and later, explains the limits of the free tier, and shows a free, local alternative in IXPDF that needs no install, no account, and has no page limits.

Which WPS plan do you need to merge PDFs?

The Merge PDF tool itself is available on WPS Free in most regions — you can combine files and reorder them without paying. What differs across plans is the page-level editing inside the merge window:

• WPS Free: add files, reorder files, merge. You may not be able to delete individual pages from a source file or rotate pages inside the merge window.
• WPS Pro / Premium: adds page-level controls inside the merge window — delete pages, rotate pages, expand a file to see its pages and pick a subset.

If you only have WPS Free and need to drop pages from a source, do that in a separate step before merging (open the source in WPS PDF, delete the pages, save, then merge).

How to merge PDFs in WPS — step by step

1. Open WPS Office. You do not need to open any file first.
2. Go to Tools → PDF Tools, or open the WPS PDF app and click the Tools tab. The PDF Tools panel opens.
3. Click Merge PDF (sometimes labeledCombine PDF). A new merge window opens.
4. Add files: click Add Files and pick the PDFs from your disk, or drag them from Explorer/Finder into the merge window.
5. Arrange the order: the files appear as a list with thumbnails. Drag them into the order you want, or use theMove Up / Move Down buttons.
6. (Optional, Pro/Premium) Edit pages within a file:click a file to expand it. You can delete individual pages or rotate them before merging — useful when one source file has a blank cover page you want to drop.
7. (Optional) Set output options: if the merge window shows an Options button, click it to choose whether to add bookmarks for each source file. Bookmarks make the merged PDF navigable — usually worth keeping on.
8. Click Merge or Start. WPS combines the files into a single PDF and opens it in the WPS PDF viewer.
9. Choose File → Save As to write the merged PDF to disk with the name and location you want.

The merge happens locally on your machine. Nothing is uploaded unless you save to WPS Cloud.

Tips for a clean merge

• Check page sizes before merging. If one source is A4 and another is Letter, the merged PDF will have mixed page sizes. That is fine for reading but can cause printing issues.
• Strip blank pages first. Many exported PDFs end with a blank page. Delete it in the source before combining so the result is clean.
• Name files in sort order. If you have many files, prefix them with numbers (01-cover.pdf,02-report.pdf, 03-appendix.pdf) so the file picker adds them in the right order.
• Merge in small batches if the tool is slow. A merge of 50 large PDFs can take a while and use a lot of memory. Merging in groups of 10 and then merging the results is often faster.

Limits of the WPS merge tool

• Page-level editing on Free. If you are on WPS Free and need to delete or rotate pages inside the merge window, you may hit a paywall. Do that editing separately first.
• Large merges can be slow. WPS loads every source file into memory. A merge of many large PDFs can take minutes and may struggle on a low-RAM machine.
• Bookmarks from file names. WPS adds a bookmark per source file, which is helpful, but it does not preserve the internal bookmarks of the source PDFs. If your sources have rich bookmark trees, those are flattened.
• Form field collisions. If two source PDFs have form fields with the same name, the merge can produce unexpected field behavior. Flatten forms before merging if you do not need them to stay live.

Common mistakes

• Merging in the wrong order. The file list order is the merge order. Double-check before clicking Merge — the thumbnail preview shows the order.
• Forgetting to Save As. The merged PDF opens in WPS but is not on disk until you save. If you close WPS without saving, the merge is lost.
• Merging certified PDFs. Merging breaks digital signatures on the source files. The merged PDF is unsigned. If the signatures matter, do not merge — or re-sign the result.
• Expecting bookmarks to survive. Internal bookmarks in the source PDFs are flattened on merge. Only the per-file bookmarks WPS adds are kept.

For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see ourIXPDF vs WPS Officebreakdown.