How to extract pages from a PDF

Extract, delete or split — pick the one that matches your goal

They overlap, and either of the first two can reach the same result. The practical difference is how much typing you do and how likely you are to make a mistake: extracting pages 2, 5 and 9 from a 40-page file means typing three numbers, while deleting to achieve the same thing means typing thirty-seven.

• Extract: keep the pages you name, discard the rest, one output file. Use it when most of the document is irrelevant.
• Delete: remove the pages you name, keep the rest, one output file. Use it when only a few pages are unwanted.
• Split: cut the document into several files at range boundaries. Use it when you need multiple documents, not one.

Selecting the pages

The same range syntax applies everywhere in this toolkit: single pages, spans with a dash, and open-ended spans. Pages are 1-based and inclusive, matching a print dialog.

A page number outside the document is an error rather than a silent skip. If you ask for page 50 of a 30-page file you get a message saying so, which is what you want — a silent skip would hand you a document missing something you believed was in it.

You can repeat a page. Listing 3, 3 genuinely produces two copies of page 3, because occasionally that is what someone needs for a printed booklet.

1. Open the PDF Toolkit and select "Extract pages".
2. Type the pages to keep, comma separated: 2, 5, 9-12.
3. Extract, then download the new document.

Why the extracted file is not much smaller

Pulling three pages out of a hundred-page document usually gives a file far smaller than the original, because most page content leaves with the pages you discarded. But it is rarely proportional.

Fonts and images are shared resources inside a PDF. If every page uses the same embedded font, that font is copied into the new document even when you keep only one page. A PDF built from photographs behaves differently from a PDF of text, and there is no reliable rule of thumb — read the size the tool reports rather than predicting it.

Worked example: pulling the signature page out of a contract

A 24-page contract needs only its execution pages — 22, 23 and 24 — sent to a colleague, plus the definitions on page 3 for context.

1. Select "Extract pages" and load the contract.
2. Enter: 3, 22-24
3. Extract and download.

Result: A four-page PDF beginning with the definitions page and followed by the three execution pages, in that order. The 24-page original is untouched on your device.

Open the tool

Extract pages in the PDF Toolkit

Gives you one new document containing the pages you name. It does not redact, and it does not alter the original.

What this does not cover

• Extraction copies whole pages. There is no way to keep part of a page or crop content out of one.
• Text you remove this way is genuinely removed from the new file, but the original still exists on your device — redaction is a different problem, and this toolkit does not do it.
• Encrypted PDFs are reported rather than opened.
• Bookmarks and document-level structure are not carried into the extracted file.