Split a PDF / extract pages

How to use it

1. Choose the PDF; the page count appears.
2. Type the pages you want, like "1-3, 7, 10-12", and extract them into a new PDF.
3. Or split the whole document into one file per page — you get a single zip rather than forty downloads.

Why an extracted page is not a fraction of the file

Pulling pages 7 to 9 out of a 200-page report builds a new document containing those three pages and everything they draw with. If page 7 sets type in an embedded typeface, the whole font program comes across; if it carries a chart, the chart’s image data comes too. The result can be a few hundred kilobytes rather than the 1.5% of the original the page count suggests.

The same logic explains the one-file-per-page mode. Splitting a 40-page document into 40 files does not divide its size by 40 - each file separately carries whatever its own page needs, so the zip is often larger than the document that went into it. That is how PDF stores shared resources, not a fault in the split, and it is the price of every page being independently openable.

Check what the extracted pages are still carrying

Extraction copies page content verbatim, which is what you want for fidelity and what catches people out on confidentiality. A black rectangle drawn over a name is not redaction: the text sits underneath it in the content stream, still selectable and still searchable, and it travels into the extracted file intact. The same applies to white text on white, content pushed outside the visible page area, and anything hidden beneath an opaque image.

Splitting is also the wrong tool when the goal is to remove something rather than isolate something. If a handful of pages need to go while the document stays one document, deleting them is the direct operation. Extraction is for when the wanted pages are the short list and they are going somewhere on their own - a single signed page, one chapter, one month’s invoices out of a year’s export.

Questions