How to delete and reorder pages in a PDF

Drop the blank scans, move the appendix to the end, and save a document that reads in the right order.

Documents arrive in the wrong order more often than they should — pages scanned back to front, an appendix stuck in the middle, blank separator sheets from a feeder.

Step-by-step

1. Add your PDF. Every page appears as a thumbnail.
2. Delete what you do not want.
3. Drag the rest into order.
4. Save.

Check before you delete

Thumbnails are small, and a page with a faint signature or a light stamp can look blank at that size. Zoom in on anything you are about to remove — recovering it means starting again from the original.

Keep the original file until you have checked the output. That habit costs nothing and has saved a great many afternoons.

Reversing a back-to-front scan

Feeders sometimes produce a document in reverse. Reversing the whole order is far quicker than moving pages one at a time, and it is worth checking whether that is the actual problem before you begin dragging.

What is preserved

Pages are moved intact, so text stays selectable and quality is unchanged. Links pointing to specific pages may end up aimed at the wrong one, since the destination has moved — worth checking in a document with an internal table of contents.

Frequently asked questions

Is the file uploaded?

No. The PDF is read and rewritten in your browser.

Will the text still be selectable?

Yes. Pages are moved rather than re-rendered, so text, quality and file size are unaffected.

Can I recover a page I deleted?

Not from the saved file. Keep the original until you have checked the result.