How to split a PDF file
Splitting a PDF means turning one document into several. The pages stay as they are; what changes is how they are grouped into files. A 300-page report becomes four chapters, a scanned batch becomes one file per invoice, a contract and its appendix stop travelling together.
Nothing is removed and nothing is rewritten. Every page of the original lands in exactly one of the new files, in the order it already had.
The cut is between two pages
A split point sits between pages, not on one. That is the whole model, and it is worth saying plainly because most mistakes come from thinking in pages instead of boundaries: a cut after page 4 means “page 4 ends a file, page 5 starts the next one”.
A twelve-page PDF with cuts after pages 4 and 9 gives three files:
- PDF 1 — pages 1–4
- PDF 2 — pages 5–9
- PDF 3 — pages 10–12
Two cuts, three files. There is no cut before the first page or after the last one, because either would produce an empty document.
Three ways to say where it splits
- By eye. Look at the pages as thumbnails and put a cut where the document itself changes — a new chapter, a new invoice, a signature page.
- Every N pages. Useful when the source is regular: a stack of two-page forms, a book of three-page statements.
- By page ranges. Type the groups you want, for example
1-4, 5-9, 10-12. This is the fastest way when you already know the structure. See splitting by page ranges.
The three are not different features so much as three ways of writing the same thing: a list of boundaries.
Check the boundaries before you save
The one habit worth having: read the resulting groups before creating the files. A split that is off by one page is easy to make and easy to miss — chapter two starting with the last page of chapter one looks fine in a file list and wrong the moment someone opens it.
Split PDF shows the groups on the pages themselves and lists the files it will create — how many, which pages in each, what they will be called — while you are still choosing. That list is the check.
What you get
The results are ordinary new PDF files. Text stays text, drawings stay drawings, page size and rotation are untouched; nothing is turned into a picture. The document’s title and author information is carried over.
The original file is not modified. Splitting reads it and writes new files beside it.
When there are several results, saving them as one ZIP is usually easier than accepting a dozen separate downloads — see saving every page as its own file for the extreme case of that.
If you only need certain pages
If what you actually want is pages 2, 7 and 10 gathered into one new document, that is a different job — selecting pages rather than cutting a sequence. The difference is worth thirty seconds.
And if the document is private, it matters where the work happens: splitting without uploading the file.
Split your PDF in the browser → Split PDF