Organize PDF

What this PDF organizer does

Drop a PDF and every page appears as a thumbnail, numbered as in the original. Click a page to mark it for deletion (click again to restore it), drag pages to a new position, use the ‹ › buttons to nudge them one slot at a time on a phone, duplicate a page with ⧉, or reverse the whole document with one button. For long files, type page numbers instead: 1-3, 5, 8- and press Delete these, or Keep only these to extract that selection into a new file. The line under the grid always tells you how many pages will come out. Press Save PDF and download the result.

Pages are copied object for object with pdf-lib, so text stays selectable, vector graphics stay sharp, embedded fonts and images are untouched and file size is essentially unchanged — this is not a print-to-PDF that rasterizes your document. Form fields and annotations travel with their pages. The file never leaves the browser: no upload, no queue, no watermark, no limit on pages or file size beyond your device's memory.

How to use it

Drop or choose one PDF. Wait a moment while thumbnails render (they appear progressively; a 300-page file takes a few seconds). To delete pages, click them — deleted pages dim and show a red ×, and their numbers are struck through; the output count updates immediately. To reorder, drag a thumbnail and drop it left or right of another one; the blue bar shows where it will land. To extract, type the pages you want into the box and press Keep only these — every other page is marked deleted, and you can still click individual pages to fine-tune. Reset undoes everything.

Save PDF writes a new file named yourfile-organized.pdf. From the result you can go straight to Merge PDF to combine it with other documents, Compress PDF to shrink it before emailing, or PDF to image. If you only need to cut a document into several files by ranges, Split PDF is quicker; if pages are upside down, fix them first with Rotate PDF. Once the order is final, add page numbers — they are printed onto the pages, so number last.

Common pitfalls

Deleting a page does not delete what it referenced elsewhere: bookmarks, links and a table of contents that pointed at removed or moved pages are dropped from the output (pdf-lib copies pages, not the outline), so a document with a clickable index will lose it. If you need the outline, delete pages in a full PDF editor instead. Password-protected files cannot be rearranged — remove the password first. Scanned PDFs work exactly like any other file; each scan is a page image and moves with its page.

Duplicating a page copies its resources too, so a duplicated full-page scan adds its full size again. Page numbers printed on the pages themselves do not change when you reorder — they are part of the content, not metadata — so a document with visible numbering may read 1, 2, 5, 3 after rearranging; add fresh numbers afterwards if that matters. Very large files (hundreds of megabytes) may run out of memory on phones; on a desktop browser they are fine.

Background: how pages are rearranged

A PDF stores its pages in a page tree; the reading order is simply the order of entries in that tree, and each page object owns its content stream, fonts and images (or references shared ones). Reordering therefore does not need to touch content at all — a new document is built by copying the chosen page objects, in the chosen order, along with everything they reference. That is why this tool preserves quality perfectly and why it is fast even on big documents: no rendering, no re-encoding of images, no re-flow of text.

The thumbnails are rendered separately with pdf.js, the same engine Firefox uses to display PDFs, purely so you can see what you are moving. They already include each page's own rotation attribute, so what you see is what a reader shows. The output is saved with object streams, which usually makes it a little smaller than the input. Everything — parsing, rendering, copying, saving — happens in JavaScript in your tab; this page works offline once loaded.

When you need to organize a PDF

Removing the blank pages a duplex scanner inserted after every single-sided sheet. Deleting the cover letter or the two advertising pages from a downloaded manual before printing it. Fixing a stack of scans that went through the feeder in the wrong order, or reversing a document that was scanned back to front. Pulling the three pages you actually need out of a 200-page report to send to a colleague. Duplicating a signature page or a blank form so it can be filled in twice. Putting a merged bundle — CV, certificates, ID — into the order an application requires.

On this site the natural chain is: merge the sources, organize the result here, compress it if it has to fit an email limit, and split off pieces for different recipients. The reverse direction — turning selected pages into pictures — is PDF to image, and image to PDF brings photos back into a document you can then arrange here.

Frequently asked questions