Good reasons to delete pages from PDF files
- Blank scans: a duplex scanner adds the empty back of every sheet. A 10 page letter becomes 20 pages until you remove them.
- Sharing less: a new employer may need your old contract, but not the page with your salary or bank details.
- Smaller uploads: every scanned page adds weight, so dropping extras helps a document fit a size limit.
- Cleaner handouts: take out cover sheets, empty notes pages or an outdated appendix before printing.
- Fixing mistakes: a page scanned twice or a wrong attachment goes without scanning everything again.
Deleting removes whole pages. To hide one line on a page, such as an account number, this is not the right tool.
Delete pages or split the PDF?
Both give you fewer pages, but they suit different jobs. It depends on how much of the document you want to keep.
| You want to | Best tool |
|---|---|
| Drop a few pages and keep the rest | Delete PDF Pages |
| Keep only 3 pages out of 80 | Split PDF with a custom range |
| Break one file into many files | Split PDF, Every page mode |
A rule of thumb: if you would click more pages than you keep, splitting out the pages you need is faster.
Tidy up the rest of the document
Before downloading, scroll through the grid once more. Dimmed pages are the ones that will disappear, so a page clicked by accident is easy to spot. At least one page has to stay.
While the thumbnails are in front of you, look for sideways pages and fix them with Rotate PDF. If the shorter file is still too big for an upload form, Compress PDF reduces the images inside.