Rearrange PDF pages

What this tool does

The tool shows a small picture of every page of a PDF. You move pages to new positions, then save a new PDF with the pages in that order.

Only the order changes. The pages are not redrawn or compressed, and bookmarks, links, form fields and document properties stay as they are, because they point to the same pages as before.

How to use it

1. Choose a PDF, or drop it on the marked area. A picture of each page appears.
2. Press the page you want to move. It is marked as selected.
3. Press Move earlier, Move later, Move to start or Move to end until the page is where it belongs. With a keyboard, the arrow keys, Home and End move the selected page while it has the focus.
4. Or drag the page with the mouse to its new place. On a phone or tablet, rest your finger on the page for a moment, then drag it.
5. Reverse order turns the whole document around; Original order undoes every move.
6. Press Save in the new order and download the file. Its name ends in -organized.

Each page button says its original page number and its position in the new order, for example "Page 7, position 2 of 12", and every move is announced to screen readers.

How the new order is stored

A PDF lists its pages in a page tree: the catalog of the file points to a Pages object whose Kids entry lists the pages, sometimes in several levels (ISO 32000-1, section 7.7.3). The tool writes a new list with the same page objects in the new order, all on one level.

Some attributes of a page, such as its size (MediaBox), visible area (CropBox), rotation and resources, may be stored on a level above it and inherited (section 7.7.3.4). Before a page moves, the tool copies such attributes onto the page itself, so it keeps its size, rotation and fonts in its new place.

Bookmarks and links refer to page objects, not to page numbers, so a bookmark to the chapter that is now on page 40 still opens that chapter. The file is written again by pdf-lib and is usually a little smaller than the original, because objects are stored more compactly.

Worked example

A licence agreement of 310 pages and 2,896,912 bytes was opened in Chrome. Page 3 was pressed and moved with Move to start, so the new order begins 3, 1, 2, 4. Three pages are at a new position; the other 307 keep theirs.

Saving took about a third of a second and gave 2,675,750 bytes. A check of the page contents showed pages 3, 1, 2 and 4 at the first four positions. Safari (WebKit) produced a file of the same size. Reversing all 310 pages gave 2,675,751 bytes in under a second.

Common mistakes

• Dragging on a phone without waiting. A quick swipe scrolls the list; rest the finger on the page until it fades, then drag.
• Expecting page numbers printed on the pages to change. They are part of the page content and move with their page; add new ones afterwards with Add page numbers.
• Trying to combine pages of two PDF files here. Merge the files first, then put the pages in order.
• Opening a password-protected PDF. It cannot be read; remove the protection first with a program that knows the password.