How to delete pages from a PDF

To delete pages from a PDF, open it at pdfviewer.work, click the delete control on each unwanted page in the thumbnail sidebar, and click Download. The new file has only the pages you kept; the original on your disk is unchanged and nothing is uploaded.

Delete pages from a PDF in three steps

1. Open the PDF here, on the delete pages tool, or with Open a PDF.
2. Remove pages. In the thumbnail sidebar, click the delete control on each page you want gone: blank backs of a duplex scan, a cover letter, the fax header. The remaining pages close up and renumber.
3. Click Download. You get a new PDF containing only the pages that are left.

Deleted the wrong page? Reload the page and open the original file again; deletion only affects the copy you download. Opening the file costs nothing, so there is no need to be careful on the first pass.

Deleting pages as a way to extract or split a PDF

The viewer has no split or extract command, but deleting is the same operation from the other side. To pull pages 4 to 6 out of a 20-page report, delete pages 1 to 3 and 7 to 20, then download; the result is a three-page PDF. To split a scan into two documents, open it twice: once deleting the second half, once deleting the first. The split PDF page lists tools that do it in one go when you have many ranges.

Before deleting, drag thumbnails to reorder if the pages you want to keep should come in a different sequence; see reorder PDF pages. Both changes are written together on Download.

Other ways to remove pages on Mac, Windows and the command line

• Preview on Mac: show thumbnails, click a page, press Delete, then Cmd+S. Select several with Cmd-click to delete them at once.
• Chrome or Edge, any system: open the PDF, press Ctrl+P, choose Save as PDF, and type the pages to keep in the Pages box (for example 1-3, 7). It re-prints the pages, so links and form fields are lost, but it needs nothing extra. More on that in print a PDF.
• Adobe Acrobat: Organize Pages in Pro deletes and extracts; Reader cannot.
• Command line: qpdf in.pdf --pages . 1-3,7-z -- out.pdf keeps pages 1 to 3 and 7 to the end; pdftk in.pdf cat 1-3 7-end output out.pdf does the same.

Common cleanups: blank backs, cover sheets, duplicates

Most page deletions are housekeeping after a scan. A duplex scanner adds a blank back for every single-sided sheet, and some leave a near-blank page with a few specks that blank-page detection missed; the thumbnails show them as white tiles, so they are quick to click away. Fax and e-signature services prepend a cover sheet and append an audit page that nobody wants in the archive. Rescanning a page produces a duplicate that sits next to the original.

Zoom in, or use the search box, when pages look alike: a contract with three near-identical schedules is easy to trim wrongly. Deleting is cheap to redo, since the original file is untouched, but checking first saves a second pass.

If the goal is a smaller file for email, deleting pages helps only when the removed pages carry their own images, such as scans. In a text PDF the fonts are shared and the saving is small. Rotate and reorder in the same session if needed; every change goes into one Download.

Troubleshooting

• There is no delete control. Make sure the thumbnail sidebar is open; the per-page controls live there, not in the main toolbar.
• The file asks for a password. Encrypted PDFs cannot be opened by the viewer. Remove the open password first with one of the methods in remove a password from a PDF.
• The downloaded file is barely smaller. Deleting a page removes it from the page tree, but fonts and images shared with other pages stay. For a real size cut see compress a PDF.
• A long scan is slow on a phone. Hundreds of scanned pages use a lot of memory; delete pages on a laptop instead.
• You need the deleted pages back. They are still in the original file. Open it again and delete the other set.

Frequently asked questions