Bhinish Dhiman
How to split a PDF into separate files or pull out a page range
Add the PDF, leave Split by on Range, set From page and To page, and press Split PDF to get one file holding that run of pages. Fixed cuts the whole document into parts of a set length, Pages saves every page or only the pages you click as separate files, and Size starts a new file at a KB or MB limit. Pages are copied, not re-rendered, so quality is unchanged.
Splitting is two jobs that share a name. Sometimes you want one section out of a long document: the appendix, or the three pages a colleague asked for. Sometimes you want the whole thing cut into pieces, because an upload form has a size cap or each chapter goes to a different reader. The tool does both in the tab, and the file stays on your machine.
What splitting a PDF means here
Splitting a PDF is producing new documents that each hold a subset of the original’s pages, copied rather than re-rendered. Copying is why the operation is lossless: an extracted page is the same page, with the same text layer and the same images at the same resolution. It is also why splitting makes nothing lighter page for page. A section cut from a scanned report weighs as much per page as the report did.
The tool has three modes under Split by, and two of them have a second choice beneath:
| Split by | Second choice | What comes out | File names, for an input called report.pdf |
|---|---|---|---|
| Range | Custom: From page, To page | One PDF holding that run of pages | report-3-7.pdf |
| Range | Fixed: Pages per file | Equal parts; the last holds whatever is left | report-part-1.pdf, report-part-2.pdf … |
| Pages | Extract all pages | One PDF per page | report-p1.pdf, report-p2.pdf … |
| Pages | Select pages | One PDF per page you click | report-p4.pdf, report-p9.pdf … |
| Size | Maximum size per file, in KB or MB | Parts that each stay under the limit where possible | report-part-1.pdf … |
When more than one file comes out, the download button offers them together as a single .zip.
Pulling out a page range, step by step
- Open Split PDF and choose Add a PDF, or drop the file onto the page. A password-protected file asks for its password first, and is decrypted in the tab before any page is copied.
- Wait for the thumbnails. Every page is drawn, so you can confirm it is the right file and find the section by sight.
- Leave Split by on Range and Range mode on Custom. When the file loads, From page is 1 and To page is the last page, so the range starts out as the whole document.
- Set From page and To page. Thumbnails outside the range fade, the number under each remaining page becomes its position in the new file, and the note beneath the fields reads “One PDF containing pages 3 to 7”, with your numbers in it.
- Press Split PDF, then the download button, which carries the file name: report-3-7.pdf for pages 3 to 7 of report.pdf.
Typing the two numbers the wrong way round still gives pages 3 to 7 in their original order, and a To page past the end stops at the last page. A From page past the end matches nothing, and the tool says “That range does not match any pages” instead of handing back an empty file.
Do another clears the loaded file, so a second section means adding the PDF again. If you need several parts, one of the other modes will usually produce all of them in a single run.
Cutting the whole document into parts
Fixed divides by page count. On a 23-page document with Pages per file set to 5, the note promises 5 PDFs, because 23 ÷ 5 = 4.6 rounds up to 5: four files of five pages and a last one of three.
Size divides by weight, for upload forms with a cap. Pages are added to a part until the next page would push it over the limit, and then a new part starts. The limit is checked against the real saved file at each step rather than an estimate. One page heavier than the limit on its own, such as a full-page scan, still becomes its own file and arrives over the limit; dropping it to honour the number would be worse.
Each part is a complete PDF, so it carries its own copy of the fonts and images its pages use. Expect the parts to add up to more than the original when the pages share those resources.
Pages with Extract all pages turns a 40-page document into 40 files. With Select pages, click the thumbnails you want; each one becomes a file, and they come out in page order whatever order you clicked them in.
What a split will not do
It will not put non-adjacent pages into one file, and it will not change their order. Range gives one continuous run; Select pages gives one file per page. If what you want is pages 1 to 3, 7 and 9 to 11 together, or the appendix moved to the front, use Organise PDF: remove the pages you do not want and drag the rest into the order you need.
It will not shrink a heavy document, because nothing is re-encoded. For that, the page to read is what lossless PDF compression saves, measured.
It will not keep bookmarks. Each part is a fresh document built from copied pages, and the bookmark outline and the form-field structure belong to the document rather than to any page, so neither is carried into the parts. Links drawn inside a page come across with it.
Other ways to split a PDF
On Windows, open the PDF in any viewer (Microsoft Edge opens PDFs), print, choose the Microsoft Print to PDF printer and type the page range. The pages you printed are saved as a new PDF.
On macOS, Preview has no split command as such, but View → Thumbnails shows a page sidebar where you can select the pages you do not want and press Delete, then use File → Export to save what remains as a copy.
On the command line, qpdf does both jobs:
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 3-7 -- part.pdf # pages 3 to 7 into part.pdf
qpdf --split-pages input.pdf page-%d.pdf # one file per page| Split PDF | A typical online splitter | Microsoft Print to PDF | qpdf | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your file is sent | No | Yes, the whole file | No | No |
| Files per day | No limit | Commonly one without an account | No limit | No limit |
| One page range | From page, To page | Yes | The print dialog’s page range | --pages . 3-7 |
| Every page as a file | Extract all pages, as a .zip | Not covered here | One print job per page | --split-pages |
| Parts by size | KB or MB limit | Not covered here | No | Not in the commands above |
| Install | None | None | Built in | Yes |
Confirming the file stayed on your machine
Open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab before adding the file. One script arrives when the first file goes in: the PDF library, about 199 KB compressed, which the page fetches only once there is something to work on. That is code coming down. Splitting sends nothing up. If you would rather test by disconnecting, add the file first so the library has loaded, then go offline and run the split.
Split PDF is free and has no daily count. To join files rather than divide them, use Merge PDF, and if any of them is password-protected, why merging an encrypted PDF can give you blank pages explains why the password prompt matters.