How to Split a PDF Online for Free
A 40-page PDF where you only need pages 12 through 15, or a scanned batch of documents that really should have been ten separate files — splitting a PDF is the opposite problem to merging, and just as common.
The two ways to split
There are two different things people usually mean by "split a PDF." One is extracting every page as its own separate file — useful when a scanner saved ten documents as one PDF and you need them apart again. The other is pulling out a specific range of pages — page 12 to 15, say — and leaving the rest behind.
How to split a PDF
- Open the Split PDF tool and upload your file.
- Choose "Extract all pages" to break every page into its own file, or "Custom ranges" to pull out specific pages.
- For custom ranges, enter the page numbers or ranges you want, separated by commas.
- Choose whether the extracted pages come back as one merged PDF or as separate files.
- Download the result.
Choosing the output mode
If you're pulling out several ranges that should end up as one document — say, pages 1-2 and pages 10-12 combined into a single new PDF — merge the output. If you actually want each range or each page as its own separate file, keep them separate instead.
If you're going the other way
Splitting assumes you're starting with one PDF and want pieces. If you're starting with several PDFs and want one document instead, that's merging, not splitting.