How to save Gmail attachments as one PDF

Seven steps on a Mac, more on Windows, or two clicks. I counted.

Anthony Sifontes, October 14, 2026

I built InboxBinder for a solo lawyer whose clients send their documents by email, and the file he needs at the end is always the same: one PDF with everything in it, ready for the case folder. Gmail keeps the attachments as separate files and has no way to combine them. So I sat down with a test email that looked like a real client’s (a photo of an ID, a two-page PDF, a zip file with two more pictures, and three photos pasted into the body of the message) and did the job by hand on my own Mac, counting every step along the way.

The short answer

You can do this with what’s already on your computer, but it takes seven steps on a Mac, and Gmail’s own download quietly leaves part of the email behind. You can upload everything to a merge website, which means handing your client’s documents to a third party. Or you can do it in two clicks from inside Gmail.

Seven steps on a Mac

Here’s what it took on a Mac, which is the easy case because macOS can combine files into a PDF without installing anything:

1. Click “Download all attachments” in Gmail. You get one zip file named after the subject line.
2. Open the zip.
3. Open the zip that was inside the zip, because an attached zip stays zipped in Gmail’s download.
4. Go back to Gmail and save each photo from the body of the email, one at a time.
5. Select every file in Finder.
6. Control-click, then choose “Quick Actions”, then “Create PDF”.¹
7. Rename the result and move it into the right folder.

Step 4 is the one that catches people. Gmail’s “Download all attachments” only collects the attachments at the bottom of the email; photos pasted into the message itself aren’t in the zip at all. On my test email, the zip held three files and none of the three body photos. If you don’t know to go back for them, they never make it into the final PDF.

To be fair to Apple, step 6 works well. Create PDF combined the photos and the PDF pages into one file, and the photos that were stored sideways came out upright. Step 6 is easy enough; the problem is the other six around it, repeated for every client email.

On Windows, it’s worse

I couldn’t find a built-in equivalent of Create PDF on Windows. The way to merge PDFs that Microsoft documents is a “Merge PDF files” action inside Power Automate for desktop, an automation app you sign in to and build a small workflow in.² That’s a reasonable tool for an IT department and a lot to ask of someone who just wants one client’s documents in one file with minimal fuss, which is why Google’s own answer for this search sends people to merge websites instead.

The shortcut most people take: uploading everything

Adobe, Smallpdf and iLovePDF all have free merge pages, and they work. They work by uploading your files to their servers, combining them there, and handing back the result. They’re upfront about it: Adobe says your file “will be securely handled by Adobe servers and deleted unless you sign in to save it,”³ Smallpdf says files are “automatically deleted from our servers after one hour,”⁴ and iLovePDF keeps them “for a maximum of 2 hours.”⁵

For a restaurant menu, that’s reasonable. For a client’s driver’s license, medical records, or a signed settlement, it means a copy of those documents sat on someone else’s server, under someone else’s retention policy, because combining files at your desk took too many steps. I don’t think that trade should happen by default, and it’s the main reason InboxBinder never uploads anything.

Two clicks instead of seven

InboxBinder is a Chrome extension that does the whole job from the email you have open, inside your browser.

1. Open the email in Gmail and click the InboxBinder icon.
2. Check the list. It shows every attached PDF, JPG, and PNG, the photos in the body of the email (each with a thumbnail), and any attached zip as one row whose images and PDFs are added when you save. Deselect anything you don’t want, like a logo from someone’s signature.
3. Click “Save as one PDF”. You get one PDF, named with the date, the sender, and the email’s subject.

Steps 1 through 5 from the Mac list disappear: there’s no zip to download, no going back for the body photos, no zip to open, and no zip nested inside the first zip. Instead, InboxBinder lists every eligible file, whether it’s in the body or attached, saves one combined PDF, and expands the contents of attached zips for you. If a photo or scan is sideways, the Rotate button on its row turns it upright with one click before saving. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and because it runs inside Chrome, it doesn’t depend on what’s installed on your computer.

What InboxBinder doesn’t do

It doesn’t include the text of the email. If you want the message itself in the record, Gmail’s Print, then Save as PDF, already does that as a separate file.

It handles PDFs, JPGs and PNGs only. Word documents, spreadsheets and iPhone HEIC photos aren’t combined, and the popup lists them by name so you can see what was excluded.

In a thread, it saves what’s in the newest message, including images and attachments that were forwarded along with it. Attachments sent with earlier replies aren’t included.

The first 5 saves are free with no account. After that it’s 2 free saves a month, or unlimited for $49 a year.

Which one to use

If it’s the occasional email with two PDF attachments and you’re on a Mac, Finder’s Create PDF is free and perfectly fine. If security isn’t a major concern, a merge website is quick and easy. If this is a regular part of your work, the emails have photos in the body or zips attached, and the documents belong to clients that expect privacy, that’s exactly the job I built InboxBinder to do.

If you regularly capture client documents as part of your work, I’d love to hear how you do it today and which step annoys you most. I read every email at [email protected].

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