Remove pages from a PDF

What this tool does

The tool shows a small picture of every page. You mark the pages to delete, and it writes a new PDF with all other pages in their original order. The original file is not changed.

The kept pages are copied as they are: text stays selectable and pictures keep their quality. The deleted pages are not hidden but left out, so their content is not in the new file.

How to use it

1. Choose a PDF, or drop it on the marked area. A picture of each page appears.
2. Press the pages you want to delete. They are marked with “remove”; press a page again to keep it.
3. Or type the pages in the field Pages to remove, for example 2, 5-7 or 10- for page 10 to the last page. The pictures follow what you type.
4. Press Remove pages and download the new PDF. Its name ends in -pages-removed.

Each page is a toggle button named “Remove page” with its number; its pressed state says whether the page will be deleted.

How the new file is made

The tool builds a new PDF and copies into it every page that is not marked, with everything these pages refer to, such as fonts and pictures. Objects that only a deleted page used are not copied. That is the difference to tools that only remove the page from the page list: there, the content of a deleted page can remain inside the file and be recovered.

At least one page has to stay. Pages are counted from 1, as PDF readers number them in their page list, which can differ from numbers printed on the pages.

Features that belong to the document as a whole are not copied: bookmarks, fillable form fields and the document title. Links inside the kept pages may stop working when they pointed to a deleted page.

Worked example

A licence agreement of 310 pages and 2,896,912 bytes should lose its pages 2 and 3 and everything from page 300 on. Typing 2-3, 300- in the field marked 13 pages; saving in Chrome took about a third of a second and gave 297 pages in 2,638,371 bytes.

Keeping only the first 10 pages (typing 11-) gave a file of 113,557 bytes. The size does not shrink in proportion to the pages: the fonts that the kept pages use are copied in full, however few pages use them.

Common mistakes

• Counting the numbers printed on the pages. A cover or a preface without numbers shifts them; use the numbers under the pictures.
• Expecting bookmarks to survive. They are not copied; if you need them, keep the original as well.
• Removing pages to hide sensitive text on a kept page. Deleting pages does not black out anything on the pages that stay.
• Deleting every page by accident. The tool refuses that and asks you to remove fewer pages.