How to Extract Pages from a PDF

You rarely need to send an entire 80-page PDF. Maybe you only want the signed page of a contract, chapters three to five of a report, or everything except the confidential appendix. Extracting pages gives you a new PDF containing only the ones you chose, and leaves the original untouched. Here is how to do it, with the syntax you need and the mistakes to avoid.

Find the real page numbers

The first trap is numbering. The number printed at the bottom of a page is not always the position of that page in the file. A report might have a cover and a contents page before page 1, so printed page 5 is really page 7 of the PDF. Always use the page number shown by your PDF viewer's page counter, which counts from the first page of the file. Note down the numbers before you start.

Using the extract tool

1. Open the Extract PDF Pages tool.
2. Add your PDF.
3. In the field labelled pages to extract, type the pages you want, separated by commas. Hyphens create ranges.
4. Press Convert and download the result.

Page-number examples

• 3: only page 3.
• 1,4,9: pages 1, 4 and 9, in that order.
• 5-8: pages 5, 6, 7 and 8.
• 1-3,10-12: the first three pages followed by pages 10 to 12.
• 2,1: page 2 first, then page 1, which reverses the order.

The new document contains the pages in the order you typed them, so extraction doubles as a quick way to reorder. Numbers that do not exist in the file, for example page 40 in a 30-page document, are ignored rather than causing an error, so double-check that your result has the number of pages you expected. If you list the same page twice, it will appear twice.

Common situations

Keep everything except one page. There is no "all except" option, so list what you want. To drop page 5 from a 10-page document, enter 1-4,6-10.

Send only the signature page. Extract that single page. Remember that if the document has been digitally signed, the signature applies to the full original document, and an extracted page is only a copy for reference.

Remove a confidential appendix before sharing. Extract the pages before the appendix. Then open the result and search for the sensitive terms to be sure nothing slipped through, because information can also be repeated in the main text.

Split into several parts. If you want every page as a separate file, use the Split PDF tool, which returns a zip containing one PDF per page. For something in between, such as chapters, run the extract tool once per chapter.

Check the result

1. Confirm the page count in the new file.
2. Skim each page: is it the one you intended, in the right order?
3. Look for pages that depend on the missing ones, such as "see the table on page 12".
4. Check the file size. Extracting a few pages from a large scanned PDF still produces a file containing those page images, so it can be large.

What does not carry over

A new PDF is built by copying the selected pages. The visible content, fonts and images come with them, but document-level extras may not: bookmarks, the outline panel, some interactive form fields and document properties such as the title can be lost. If you rely on them, test the output or keep the original for the recipient who needs that functionality.

Privacy considerations

The page extraction happens inside your browser, so the document stays on your device. This is the point of using a local tool for contracts, invoices and personal records. Even so, remember that extracting pages is not the same as redacting. If a confidential figure appears on a page you keep, it is still there. For genuinely sensitive material, make sure the pages you share contain only what the recipient should see.

Troubleshooting

The output is just one page. The tool defaults to page 1 if it cannot read your entry. Check that you used only digits, commas and hyphens, with no words or extra symbols.

The file will not open in the tool. It may be password protected or damaged. Open it in a PDF viewer, save an unlocked copy, and try again.

Pages are in the wrong order. Retype the list in the order you want, or fix the result with the reorder tool.

If you later need to put several extracted PDFs together, our merge guide shows how.

Planning extractions from long documents

For a long report, take a minute to jot down the sections you will need before you start: a title, the page range and who receives it. Extracting once per audience, for example one file for the finance team and another for the legal team, is quicker than editing one file repeatedly. Name each output clearly, such as report-finance-pages-12-19.pdf, so nobody confuses a partial copy with the complete document, and mention in your message that the attachment is an excerpt.