Delete pages from a PDF

How to use it

1. Choose a PDF — the page count is shown so you can check you have the right file.
2. Type the pages to remove, like "2, 5-7". Everything else is kept, in order.
3. Press Delete and the trimmed PDF downloads straight away.

Deleting pages and extracting pages solve different problems

Both end with fewer pages, but the arithmetic runs in opposite directions. Deleting is right when the unwanted pages are the short list: the blank separator sheets a duplex scanner inserted, an internal cover, an appendix nobody outside the company needs. Naming "2, 5-7" takes a moment, whereas naming every page you wanted to keep out of a 40-page file does not.

Extraction is right when the wanted pages are the short list, and it produces new documents rather than a shorter one. The other difference is the output. Deleting always hands back a single file with its original sequence and structure otherwise intact, which is what you want when the result is still the same document - a report going out with its draft pages pulled, rather than one chapter being lifted away from it.

What the remaining pages do not notice

The kept pages are copied across untouched, and that includes everything printed on them. Folios drawn into the page content do not recalculate, so a document can read 1, 2, 3 and then jump to 8. A contents page still lists sections at the page numbers they used to occupy. Bookmarks and internal links that pointed at a removed page have nowhere to land, and those pointing past it now resolve to the wrong sheet.

The file does not shrink in proportion either. Fonts, colour profiles and any image used on more than one page are shared across the document, and whatever the survivors still need is still carried, so deleting half a 30-page report rarely halves its size. If the trimmed version is going to be printed or circulated, renumber it afterwards - page numbers are the last step, not the first.

Questions