Delete or rearrange PDF pages without Acrobat Pro (and fix scans in the wrong order)
This covers removing pages you do not need and putting scanned pages back in order, whether the whole file came out backwards or the odd and even pages landed in two separate runs. It also explains why Acrobat Reader will not do it and what you lose if you print to PDF instead.
Deleting a page and moving a page are the two most common PDF fixes, and the most widely installed PDF program does neither. So people print to PDF, feed the whole stack through the scanner again, or upload the document to a site they have never heard of. Here is what works where.
Why Acrobat Reader has no Delete Pages option
Search for how to delete a page from a PDF and most instructions send you to Organize Pages. In the free Reader you will not get far. Someone asked about exactly this on Adobe's own forum, ready to pay if that is what it took:
Hi, I am with free Acrobat, must delete last page, most google searches say I have to look for "pages". Just to make sure I purchase the right thing, is it Redact or Organize?
Acrobat Reader forum, March 2019, about 1,200 views.
The reply was short: "You can't delete pages with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. With the paid version of Adobe Acrobat you can do that in either Organize Pages or in the Pages panel." Adobe's plan comparison says the same thing in its own way. Reader is listed for "View, print, share, and comment", and organizing pages comes with Acrobat Pro.
Adobe does offer free web tools. From the Acrobat on the web homepage, Edit > Organize pages lets you drag thumbnails around and delete them. The online Delete Pages tool, though, asks you to sign in after the upload before you can save anything, and its page states: "Your file will be securely handled by Adobe servers and deleted unless you sign in to save it." If the document should not leave your computer, that rules it out.
On a Mac, Preview already does this
Nothing to install. From Apple's Preview User Guide: choose View > Thumbnails or View > Contact Sheet, select the page or pages to delete, then press the Delete key or choose Edit > Delete. To move pages, stay in the same view and drag the thumbnails to their new position.
- The same guide carries a warning: "When you delete a page from a PDF, all the annotations on the page are removed as well." Check for highlights and notes before you delete.
- If you need the original untouched, copy the file in Finder first and open the copy.
The print-to-PDF workaround, and what it drops
On Windows, the usual install-free trick is printing. In Chrome you change the destination to Save as PDF, or you choose the Microsoft Print to PDF printer, and type only the pages you want to keep. It works because printing does not copy the file at all. It draws each page as it would go to paper and builds a new PDF from that drawing.
That is also the catch. On Adobe's forum, someone printed a 2,500-page PDF to a new PDF to lock in added page numbers and found that every bookmark had disappeared. The reply:
You don't. While printing from Acrobat to PDF is recommended all over the internet, it's actually a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons.
Answer to "How do I retain bookmarks in new PDF when printing from a PDF with bookmarks?", about 19,700 views.
- Bookmarks (the outline in the sidebar): expect them to be gone.
- Links: forum threads report clickable links dying after printing to PDF from Microsoft Edge and from the macOS print dialog.
- Form fields: printing passes on only what the page looks like, so fillable fields come out as flat marks you cannot type into.
- File size: the file is rebuilt from scratch, so the size changes too.
For a plain scan with no links, bookmarks or fields, there is little to lose, and printing is a perfectly good fix.
Scanned back to front: reverse the whole file
A sheet feeder that pulls from the wrong end puts the last page first, so page 1 ends up at the very end of the file. Dragging 150 thumbnails one at a time is not the answer. You want one command that flips the whole order. The Reorder tool on this site has a Reverse button that applies to every page in the document, including pages beyond the first 120 that the preview shows. Apple's guide page on moving pages in Preview describes only dragging.
If some sheets also went in upside down, fix the order first and rotate afterwards. Rotating while you reorder makes it easy to lose track.
Odd pages first, then even pages
With a one-sided scanner you scan all the fronts, flip the stack and scan all the backs. The file then holds 1, 3, 5 … and only after that the even pages. This question on Adobe's forum has close to 100,000 views:
I've got a document scanner that only scans one side … I can scan all odd pages first in one go - I get one pdf generated pages 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19 … Is there any quick way I can merge both pdfs to give me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... 20?
May 2011, 98,573 views.
There is a second trap, which a Mac user ran into on Apple's forum while building an Automator workflow for exactly this:
When I scan the odd pages the PDF is in the correct ascending order. When I flip the stack to scan the even pages, they are in reverse order.
December 2008.
So look at the file before fixing it. Is the page right after the last front page 2, or the final page of the document? If the fronts and backs are two separate files, join them first with a merge tool, fronts first. Then type the order you want into the Page range box of the Split tool on this site. It builds the new file in exactly the order you type. For five sheets (ten pages):
| Backs came out | Order inside the file (real page numbers) | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 (in order) | 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 | 1, 6, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, 9, 5, 10 |
| 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 (reversed) | 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 | 1, 10, 2, 9, 3, 8, 4, 7, 5, 6 |
The pattern: if the backs are in order, alternate between the start and the middle; if they are reversed, alternate between the start and the end. Spaces work as separators as well as commas. Up to 20 or 30 sheets, typing it out is manageable.
For hundreds of pages, typing gets error-prone, and this site has no automatic interleave button. PDFsam Basic, a free desktop program, has a Mix feature built for this. Its page says it "combines the odd and even pages from a single-sided scanner", and you can enable reverse order for any file "that was scanned back to front". And if your scanner or copier can scan both sides, using that avoids the whole problem.
Using the tools on this site
All three run in your browser and do not upload the file. Each takes one PDF at a time and gives you a new file to download, so the original stays as it was.
- Delete pages: click thumbnails to select them. A checkbox switches between "Delete selected pages" and "Keep only selected pages", so keeping 3 pages out of 80 means selecting just those 3. It will not let you delete every page.
- Reorder: drag the thumbnails. Each one shows its new position, plus its original page number in brackets once it has moved. The Reverse and Reset order buttons sit above the thumbnails.
- Split: extracts pages in the order you type them, and includes a page twice if you type its number twice. Because you type instead of drag, it is the easiest of the three on a phone.
- The preview draws only the first 120 pages. To delete or move pages further into a longer document, split off that part, fix it, then merge the pieces back together.
We also tested what survives. Pages are copied rather than redrawn, so text stays selectable text, images keep their quality, and links to websites still work. Because a new file is built, though, bookmarks, links that jump to another page of the same document, fillable form fields, and the document title and author do not come along. That is less than printing loses, but if a document needs working bookmarks or form fields, remove the pages inside the original with an installed editor such as Acrobat Pro. We have not checked how much each of those programs keeps.
Common questions
- Do the page numbers printed on the pages update after I delete one?
- No. A number printed on a page is part of that page. Delete page 3 and the third page of the file still says 4.
- Can it find and remove blank pages automatically?
- No. Pick them out from the thumbnails. For duplex scans with blank backs, sort the order first so you do not lose your place.
- Does the Reorder tool also turn upside-down pages?
- No, it only changes the order. Once the order is right, put the file through the Rotate tool and turn just the pages that need 180 degrees.
- Will it work on my phone?
- Yes, it opens and runs in a phone browser. Files over 40 MB bring up a warning that the phone may run out of memory partway through, so long scans are safer on a computer.
Last updated September 30, 2026 · As of September 30, 2026. Acrobat Reader and Acrobat on the web details come from Adobe's own pages, Preview steps from Apple's Preview User Guide, and PDFsam details from pdfsam.org. What this site's tools keep and drop was tested on the same date with a sample PDF.
