Split PDF

Seeing the cuts before you make them

The mistake this tool exists to prevent is splitting in the wrong place. "Every 2 pages" sounds unambiguous until the document has a cover sheet, and then every file is one page out. A number in a box cannot tell you that; a gap drawn between page four and page five can.

So the pages are shown as pages, and the first page of each new file is marked. Change the mode or the ranges and the marks move. It takes two seconds to check and saves the usual round of splitting, looking, and splitting again.

Three ways to cut, for three different jobs

Every page is for a document that was never one document: a batch of scanned invoices, a set of certificates, anything where each page stands alone.

Every N pages is for regular structure. Double-sided scans come in twos, booklets in fours, and a report with fixed-length sections in whatever it uses.

Ranges is for everything else, and is how most people actually think: 1-3, 4-8, 9-. It is also how you extract one page, by typing its number on its own, which comes down as a single PDF rather than a ZIP with one thing in it.

Nothing is redrawn

Splitting copies the page objects into new documents. The text stays text, the fonts stay embedded, the images keep their resolution, and the pages keep their size and rotation. Nothing is rasterised, so the pieces are as sharp and as selectable as the original.

One consequence surprises people: the pieces can add up to more than the original. If a font or an image was shared across pages that are now in separate files, each file needs its own copy. For a text-heavy document with several embedded fonts that can be noticeable, and it is the price of each piece being a complete document.

Names that sort

Each file is named after the original with its page numbers added, padded to the document's length, so page 7 of 120 becomes name-007.pdf and sorts before page 70. That sounds like a detail until you split a 200 page scan and open the folder.

Anything more than one file arrives as a single ZIP, which is what a browser can hand you in one download without asking permission two hundred times.

If you want pictures rather than documents

Splitting gives you PDFs. If what you actually want is an image of a page, to put in a slide or a message, PDF to PNG renders pages at a resolution you choose and keeps text sharp, and PDF to JPG does the same where the pages are photographs. Getting the images out of a PDF explains which of those you want, because rendering a page and extracting a placed picture are two different jobs.

Locked documents

A password-protected PDF cannot be split while it is locked: its contents are encrypted, and rearranging encrypted streams would produce a broken file rather than a document. Open it in your reader with the password, save an unlocked copy, and split that one.

Nearby

Merge PDF is the other direction, and it can take part of a file as it merges, so splitting first is often unnecessary. Compress PDF is the page for pieces that are still too big to send.