How to rotate pages in a PDF

Scanned sideways, or a landscape page in a portrait document. Rotating in your viewer does not save it — this does.

Most PDF readers let you rotate the view, and that rotation is not written to the file. Reopen it, or send it to somebody, and the page is sideways again. Saving the rotation means changing the document.

Step-by-step

1. Add your PDF. It is read in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
2. Select the pages to rotate, or all of them.
3. Choose the direction — 90° clockwise, 90° anticlockwise, or 180°.
4. Apply and download.

Rotating some pages, not all

Scans commonly have a few pages the wrong way — a landscape table in a portrait report, or a batch fed in sideways. Select just those. Applying a rotation to every page to fix three of them creates twenty new problems.

Why the text still selects correctly afterwards

Rotation here sets each page's rotation property rather than re-rendering the page as a picture. The text stays text, so it remains searchable and selectable, and the file does not grow. Tools that flatten pages to images to rotate them destroy both properties, and the result is a much larger file you can no longer search.

Frequently asked questions

Does rotating reduce quality?

No. The page's rotation property is changed and the content is untouched, so text stays text and nothing is re-compressed.

Can I rotate just one page?

Yes. Select the pages you want and leave the rest alone.

Why does my viewer show it correctly but the recipient's does not?

You probably rotated the view rather than the file. A view rotation is not saved into the document; this tool changes the document itself.