Writing page ranges that work
The range box understands the same style that print dialogs use. Separate items with commas and use a hyphen for a run of pages:
- 5 is page 5 only.
- 2-4 is pages 2, 3 and 4.
- 8- is page 8 to the last page.
- -3 is the first three pages.
Page numbers here are the position in the file, starting at 1. They can differ from the numbers printed on the pages, for example when a report has a cover and roman-numbered front matter. Use the thumbnails to confirm before you split.
Output files are named after your original with the page numbers added, such as report_pages-03-07.pdf. Numbers are padded with zeros so the files sort in the right order in any folder.
In Extract mode, overlapping items are merged and the pages are saved in page order. In Custom ranges mode, each range becomes its own file, so overlaps are allowed when you need the same page in two outputs.
Which split mode should you use?
Extract pages is for keeping a few pages and dropping the rest, such as the pages a form asks you to upload. It is also a quick way to delete pages: select everything except the ones you don’t want.
Every page suits scanned stacks of receipts or certificates, where each page is a separate document. Every N pages fits regular batches, like two-page forms scanned in one go.
Custom ranges is for chapters or sections of uneven length. Type the start and end of each section and you get one file per section, named with its page numbers.
Before you split a scanned batch
Scroll through the thumbnails first. Scanners sometimes add a blank back page or feed two sheets at once, which shifts every later document by a page. If that happens, Every N pages will cut in the wrong places. Switch to Custom ranges and type the real start and end of each document, or extract and drop the stray pages first, then split the clean copy.
File size after splitting
Each new file contains the pages you chose plus the fonts and images those pages use. A file with one page of a long text document can therefore be larger than you would guess, because the full embedded fonts come with it. Added together, the parts may be larger than the original.
If a part is still too big for an upload limit, run it through Compress PDF. To put chosen parts back together in a new order, use Merge PDF, and to turn a page into a picture for a slide or chat, use PDF to Image.
Bookmarks and document-level form data are not copied into the parts. The visible page content, including links on the page, is kept. If the original was signed with a certificate-based digital signature, the parts are new files and no longer carry a valid signature, so keep the signed original for your records.