[Tex/LaTex] Making one PDF file from multiple PDFs or Tex

combine

I am creating a lab manual that contains a dozen or so different labs. I want to create each lab manual as their own compilable standalone document and in a main.tex file I would like to put them all in order.

I have looked into the \input, \include, and \import commands. \input is clearly not what I want. \include has not worked for reasons about preamble commands located not in the preamble. The answer may be in \import somewhere and I don't know how to use it. (It would be great if someone could show me.)

Also I could combine the PDFs with a shell script, but if that is the answer I am not sure how to combine the PDFs.

Best Answer

You might be looking for the subfiles package. You have one main tex-file (main.tex for example) with the entire preamble you want in each file. Here you choose the documentclass you like and use the package subfiles: \usepackage{subfiles}. Between \begin{document} and \end{document} you use \subfile{chapter1.tex} to include chapter1.tex.

In your seperate files (for example chapter1.tex, chapter2.tex, chapter3.tex) you write the following: \documentclass[main.tex]{subfiles}. This way you can create seperate pdfs from each chapter (just compile the chapter1.tex file for example) and you can create a main.pdf.

A minimal example:

main.tex

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{subfiles}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\subfile{chapter1.tex}
\end{document}

chapter1.tex

\documentclass[main.tex]{subfiles}
\begin{document}
Here comes some text
\end{document}
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