How to Split a PDF and Extract Only the Pages You Need
Extract page ranges, split a PDF into one file per page, or drop the pages you do not want — privately, in your browser.
Open Split PDF — free, in your browser
Two different ways to break up a PDF
Extract Pages builds one new PDF containing exactly the pages you name, which is what you want when you need a chapter, a signature page, or a single form out of a long document. Split Every N Pages chops the whole file into equal parts instead — set it to one for a separate PDF per page, or to five for chunks of five. Both copy the original pages without re-encoding them.
Steps to extract specific pages
- Open the Split PDF tool and select your file; the page count appears once it has been read.
- Choose Extract Pages.
- Type the pages you want, for example 1-3, 5, 9-11.
- Press Extract and Download to get one PDF named after the original with -extracted on the end.
How to write the page ranges
- Separate entries with commas: 4, 7, 12 pulls three individual pages.
- Use a hyphen for an inclusive range: 2-6 means pages two to six, six included.
- Mix the two freely: 1-3, 5, 9-11.
- Numbering follows the pages in the file, which is not always the number printed on the paper — covers and front matter shift them.
- A range has to fit inside the document. On a 20-page file, 5-40 is ignored completely rather than trimmed to 5-20, so check the page count first.
- Repeats collapse and the output is always in ascending order: typing 9, 2 gives you page 2 followed by page 9. Extracting cannot reorder pages.
How to delete pages from a PDF
There is no delete button, and you do not need one — extracting the pages you want to keep produces exactly the same file. Say a 12-page scan has a blank sheet at page 4 and a duplicate at page 9: enter 1-3, 5-8, 10-12 and the result is your document without them. The pages you leave out are not hidden, they are simply absent from the new file, so nothing can be pulled back out of it later.
Splitting into one file per page
Choose Split Every N Pages and set N to 1 for a separate PDF per page, or a larger number to group them; the final part holds whatever is left over. Because that produces more than one file, the download arrives as a ZIP. Inside, each part is named with the pages it contains — pages_1-1, pages_2-2 and so on — so they sort into the right order in any folder view.
Quality and file size
Pages are copied rather than re-encoded, so text stays selectable and images keep their resolution. Size does not divide neatly though: a page pulled out of a long report still carries the fonts and resources that page refers to, so a one-page extract is often larger than one page worth of the original. Compress the result if it has to travel by email.
Locked and sideways files
A PDF that demands a password before it opens has to be unlocked before it can be split, and it is worth unlocking any protected file first rather than splitting the encrypted version. If some pages come out sideways, that orientation was already in the source — correct it after splitting.
What people use this for
Crop extracted pages · Add page numbers · Edit original text in extracted pages · Merge the pieces back together · How to merge PDF files
- Pulling one chapter or appendix out of a long report.
- Sending only the signature page instead of an entire contract.
- Turning a batch scan into one PDF per invoice or per form.
- Removing the blank sheets a scanner inserted between documents.
- Breaking a file apart so the pages can be merged back in a different order.
Privacy
Splitting happens entirely in your browser and the file is never uploaded. That keeps contracts, payroll, and medical records on your own machine, and it is the reason the tool needs no account and imposes no limits.