Split a PDF
Pull out the pages you need, or break a document into one file per page. Nothing is uploaded.
Free · No sign-up · Your file never leaves your computer
No file handy? — generated here, not downloaded.
How to use it
- 1
Add the PDF you want to split.
- 2
Type the pages to keep — 1-3, 7, 12- works, and so does a single number. Or choose one file per page.
- 3
Download. Everything else in the original is left alone.
When you would use this
Splitting is usually about sending less, not organising more. Somebody needs page four of a twelve-page agreement, and sending all twelve means they read all twelve — or worse, they see the fee schedule you did not intend to share. A tender return needs one annexure as its own document because the portal takes one file per field.
Ranges here follow the convention printers and copiers use, because that is what people already have in their heads. 1-3, 7, 12- means pages one to three, page seven, and everything from twelve to the end. Numbers start at one, not zero, matching what is printed on the page rather than what a programmer would expect.
Out-of-range numbers are clamped rather than refused. Asking for pages 1-50 of a twelve-page document gives you the twelve, because that is obviously what was meant. Asking for page 400 gives you nothing and says so, rather than silently handing back an empty PDF — an empty file that downloads successfully is the worst outcome available, since you only find out at the other end.
One file per page is the other common need, usually for scanning. A stack of receipts scanned as one long PDF has to become individual files before anything can be filed against individual expenses. Be warned that a hundred-page document produces a hundred downloads, which some browsers will ask you to permit.
Pages are copied rather than re-encoded, so text stays selectable and quality is untouched. As with merging, interactive form fields and digital signatures do not survive being moved into a new document — a signature covers the file it was applied to, so extracting a page from a signed contract gives you the content but not the proof.
Questions
- How do I write the page range?
- Commas separate, hyphens make a range. 1-3, 7, 12- means pages one to three, page seven, and twelve onward. A trailing hyphen means 'to the end'.
- Do the pages come out in the order I typed?
- They come out in document order, not typing order. Typing 7, 1 gives you page one then page seven. If you need a different order, extract them and use the merge tool to arrange them.
- Is the original changed?
- No. A new PDF is built from copies of the pages you asked for, and your original file is never modified — it is not even uploaded.
- Why did I get a hundred downloads?
- One file per page does exactly that. For a long document, use the range option instead and pull out only the pages you actually need.
- Can I split a password protected PDF?
- Not directly. Remove the password in your PDF reader first — a locked file cannot be read without it, and the file never reaches us to ask.
Related tools
Splitting because the whole document was never the point
Ofivio issues the drawing, the invoice or the instruction as its own record on the project it belongs to, so the right person gets the right page without anyone cutting a file up.
See Ofivio