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title: "PDF Metadata Preservation: What Survives a Merge"
description: "A merge does not carry metadata across on its own."
tags: ["metadata", "preservation", "survives", "merge"]
canonical_url: https://pdfmergenext.shop/blog/pdf-metadata-preservation-merge
A merge does not carry metadata across on its own. The fields that describe a whole document exist once per file, so after two files become one only one set of values can stay, and most tools keep the first source.
Where metadata actually lives. PDF metadata is not a single block. It sits in several places and each one behaves differently during a merge, so it helps to know where a field lives before arguing about whether it should survive.
What survives and what gets overwritten. |---|---|---|---|
The rows that matter are the first three plus XMP. A changed modification date or producer is just the record of what happened, and there is nothing to restore.
Three ways metadata goes missing. Expecting metadata to combine automatically is the common one, and it never works: the merge tool picks one set and the rest is dropped. Compressing before merging is the sneaky one, since plenty of compression tools strip fields as a side effect, so merge first and compress once.
The part worth keeping: Expecting metadata to combine automatically is the common one, and it never works: the merge tool picks one set and the rest is dropped. Full write-up is on the source blog.
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