Hacks VitaeAll tools
freecompressconvert
client-side only

Rotate, delete and reorder PDF pages

Fix the scan that came out sideways, drop the blank pages, and put the rest in the right order. Nothing is re-encoded and nothing is uploaded.

Drop a PDF

Pages are copied whole. Text stays text.

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    Quick answer

    Three edits, no re-encoding

    // Answer

    Rotation is written into the page, so the file opens the right way up in every reader, not just the one you fixed it in. Deleting pages is often the quickest way to shrink a PDF. Reordering copies pages into a new sequence. None of the three touches the text or the images.

    Limits

    What you lose

    The operation underneath copies pages, not the document. Bookmarks do not survive, because the outline points at the original page objects and those references do not come along. Form fields may stop behaving as fields. Digital signatures break, as they should: a signature covers a specific arrangement of pages, and you have just changed it.

    A password-protected PDF cannot be opened at all. The tool says so rather than pretending. Remove the protection in whatever applied it first.

    If any of that matters, keep your original. This writes a new file and never overwrites what you dropped in.

    The useful trick

    Deleting beats compressing

    People reach for a compressor when a PDF is too big for an upload form. For a scanned document that often does very little, because re-saving a PDF rewrites its structure and does not re-compress the images inside it. A scan is a stack of photographs, and the photographs are the size.

    Removing the pages you do not need cuts the file roughly in proportion, immediately. If you need every page but still need it smaller, split it into parts and send them separately, or rescan at a lower setting. If the pages began as photos, compress the images before building the PDF.

    FAQ

    Frequently asked questions

    Yes. Rotation is written into the page itself, so the file opens the right way up everywhere, not just in the viewer you happened to use. That is the difference between rotating in a reader and rotating the document.
    Usually yes, and often by a lot if the pages you removed contained scans or photographs. For a scanned document it usually does far more than re-saving it. The compressor explains why.
    No. Pages are copied across whole. Text stays selectable, images keep their original quality, and nothing is re-encoded. Only the order, the rotation and which pages exist can change.
    Bookmarks are lost. The underlying operation copies pages, not the document outline that points at them, so the outline does not survive. Form fields may stop behaving as fields. If either matters, keep your original.
    No. An encrypted file cannot be read without its password, and the tool will tell you it could not open it rather than guessing. Remove the protection in the application that applied it first.
    No. The PDF is read and rewritten in this tab, on your own machine. That is the point: reordering the pages of a contract should not involve sending the contract anywhere.

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