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Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages

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  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. Introducing the new Acrobat experience
    3. What's new in Acrobat
    4. Keyboard shortcuts
    5. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. PDFs converted to web pages
    12. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    13. PDF articles
    14. Geospatial PDFs
    15. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    16. Change the default font for adding text
    17. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to PPTX
    4. Convert PDF to XLSX or XML
    5. Convert PDF to JPG
    6. Convert PDF to PNG
    7. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    8. File format options for PDF export
    9. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. Create a web form
    5. Request e-signatures in bulk
    6. Collect online payments
    7. Brand your account
    8. About certificate signatures
    9. Certificate-based signatures
    10. Validating digital signatures
    11. Adobe Approved Trust List
    12. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
    7. Cloud-based auto-tagging
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

Learn how to rotate, move, delete, extract, or renumber pages in a PDF.

Before you begin

We're rolling out a new, more intuitive product experience. If the screen shown here doesn’t match your product interface, select help for your current experience.

In the new experience, the tools appear on the left side of the screen.

To manipulate pages in a PDF, ensure that you have permission to edit the PDF. Select Document properties from the hamburger menu  (Windows) or File menu in macOS, then select the Security tab in the dialog. Review your permissions for the document under Document Restrictions Summary.

Rotate pages in a PDF

You can rotate all or select pages in a document. Rotation is based on 90-degree increments. You can rotate pages using the rotate tools in the Page Thumbnails pane or the Rotate option.
 

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Rearrange the pages in your PDF in a few simple steps.

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  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat, choose All tools > Organize pages.

  2. Specify the page range on which you want to apply the rotation. Select the drop-down menu under PAGES SELECTED, then select the appropriate option. Alternatively, you can enter the page number you want to operate on.

  3. After specifying the page range, for Direction, select either Rotate page left for counterclockwise 90° rotation or Rotate page right° for clockwise 90° rotation.

  4. You can also apply the page rotation on a specific page by selecting the buttons in the right pane.

    Page Thumbnail View
    Page rotation in the page thumbnail view.

    Note:

    To temporarily change your view of the page, from the hamburger menu   (Windows) or the View menu (macOS), choose View > Rotate view > Rotate view right or Rotate view left. The original page orientation is restored the next time you open the PDF.

Extract pages from a PDF

Extraction is reusing selected pages of one PDF in a different PDF. Extracted pages include the content and the form fields, comments, and links of the original document.

You can leave the extracted pages in the original document or remove them during extraction.

Note:

Any bookmarks or article threadings associated with pages aren't extracted.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat. From the upper left, select All Tools > Organize pages.

  2. Specify the page range on which you want to apply the rotation. Select the drop-down menu under PAGES SELECTED, then select the appropriate option. Alternatively, you can enter the page number you want to operate on.

  3. Select Extract pages   under PAGE OPTIONS.

  4. In the dialog, select one or more of the following before you select Extract:

    • To remove the extracted pages from the original document, select Delete pages after extracting.
    • To create a single-page PDF for each extracted page, select Extract pages as separate files.
    • To keep the original pages intact and create a single PDF for the extracted pages, deselect both options.

The extracted pages are placed in a new document.

Note:

The creator of a PDF document can set the security to prevent the extraction of pages. To view the security settings for a document, choose Document properties from the hamburger menu  (Windows) or File menu in macOS and then select the Security tab in the dialog.

Extract random pages from a PDF

You can also select and extract discontinuous pages from the page thumbnails in the right navigation pane of Acrobat.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat. From the upper left, select All Tools > Organize pages.

  2. Specify the pages which you want to extract separated with a comma. For example, if you want to extract pages 3 and 5, enter 3, 5 in the pages field under PAGES SELECTED.

    Select the Extract pages icon   under PAGE OPTIONS.

    Extract pages from a PDF option is shown in Acrobat interface.

  3. In the dialog, select one or more of the following before you select Extract:

    • To remove the extracted pages from the original document, select Delete pages after extracting.
    • To create a single-page PDF for each extracted page, select Extract pages as separate files.
    • To keep the original pages intact and create a single PDF for the extracted pages, deselect both options.

The extracted pages are placed in a new document.

Split PDFs into multiple documents

You can split one or more PDFs into multiple smaller PDFs. When splitting a PDF, you can specify the split by the maximum number of pages, maximum file size, or top-level bookmarks.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat. From the upper left, select All Tools > Organize pages.

  2. In the left pane, under PAGE OPTIONS, select Split. A command dialog appears for the Split operation.

  3. In the Split By list, select the criteria for dividing the document:

    Number of pages

    Specify the maximum number of pages for each document in the split.

    File Size

    Specify the maximum file size for each document in the split.

    Top-level Bookmarks

    If the document includes bookmarks, it creates one document for every top-level bookmark.

  4. To specify a target folder for the split files and filename preferences, select Output Options. Specify the options as needed, and then select OK.

  5. Select Split.

Split multiple PDFs

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat. From the upper left, select All Tools > Organize pages.

  2. In the left pane, under PAGE OPTIONS, select Split. A command dialog appears for the Split operation.

  3. In the Split by list, select the criteria for dividing the document:

    Number of pages

    Specify the maximum number of pages for each document in the split.

    File Size

    Specify the maximum file size for each document in the split.

    Top-level Bookmarks

    If the document includes bookmarks, it creates one document for every top-level bookmark.

  4. To specify a target folder for the split files and filename preferences, select Output Options. Specify the options as needed, and then select OK.

  5. Select Split multiple files. Select Add Files, and choose Add Files, Add Folders, or Add Open Files. Select the files or folder, and then select OK. Select Split.

Move or copy pages in a PDF

To copy or move pages within a document, use the page thumbnails in the right navigation pane or the document area. You can also transfer pages between documents using these thumbnails. In the Organize Pages view, drag and drop thumbnails to rearrange pages, or select a thumbnail and copy it as needed.

Move or copy a page

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat, and select All tools > Organize pages.  The page thumbnails are displayed in the Document area.

  2. Select one or more page thumbnails.

  3. Do one of the following:
    • To move a page, drag the corresponding page thumbnail to the new location. A bar will appear to show the new position of the page thumbnail. The pages will be renumbered.
    • To cut or copy a page, select the page, and then select the ellipsis icon   in the context menu bar displayed next to it. Select Cut or Copy from the context menu. Select between the page thumbnails where you want to paste the page. A blue horizontal marker shows the selected location where you want to paste. Select Paste from the context menu. You can paste the pages in another PDF as well.
    Note:

    You can also move or copy pages by selecting the Page Thumbnails button from the right pane. 

Copy a page between two PDFs

  1. Open both PDFs and display them alongside each other.

    To display the PDFs side by side, select Window from the hamburger menu  (Windows) or the Window menu (macOS). Then select Tile > Vertically.

  2. Select All tools > Organize pages. The page thumbnails are displayed in the Document area.

  3. Select the page thumbnail of the page you want to cut or copy. To select multiple pages, press Ctrl (Windows) or command (macOS) and then select the pages. From the page thumbnail context menu, select Copy.

  4. In the page thumbnails of the target PDF, select between the page thumbnails where you want to insert the page. A blue horizontal marker indicates the location where you want to paste. Right-select and choose Paste.

    The page is copied into the document, and the pages are renumbered. You can paste the pages in another PDF as well. Alternatively, you can also drag the page thumbnail into the Page Thumbnails panel of the target PDF.

Delete or replace pages in a PDF

You can replace an entire PDF page with another PDF page. Only the text and images on the original page are replaced. Any interactive elements associated with the original page, such as links and bookmarks, aren't affected. Likewise, bookmarks and links that may have been previously associated with the replacement page don't carry over. Comments, however, are carried over and are combined with any existing comments in the document.

After you delete or replace pages, it’s a good idea to use the Reduce File Size command to rename and save the restructured document to the smallest possible file size.

A page before and after it is replaced. The page’s bookmarks and links remain in the same locations.

Delete multiple pages in a PDF

Note:

You can't undo the Delete command.

  1. Select All tools > Organize pages. The page thumbnails are displayed in the Document area.

  2. Specify the page thumbnail of the pages you want to delete and separate them with a comma. For example, if you want to delete pages 3 and 5, enter 3, 5 in the pages field under PAGES SELECTED.  You can also choose from the options given in the drop-down menu.

  3. In the left pane, select Delete pages , and the select OK to confirm.

    You can't delete all pages; at least one page must remain in the document.

    Note:

    If you select Use Logical Page Numbers in the Page Display panel of the Preferences dialog box, you can enter a page number in parentheses to delete the corresponding page. For example, if the first page in the document is numbered i, you can enter (1) in the Enter Page Range list, and the page is deleted.

Delete a page in a PDF

  1. Select All tools > Organize pages. The page thumbnails are displayed in the Document area.

  2. Select a page thumbnail of the page you want to delete. Then, select Delete from the contextual toolbar that appears next to the selected page thumbnail. 

Replace pages in a PDF

  1. Open the PDF that contains the pages you want to replace.

  2. Select All tools > Organize pages. The page thumbnails are displayed in the Document area.

  3. In the left tools pane, select Replace. The file explorer window appears.

  4. Select the document containing the replacement pages.

  5. In the Replace Pages dialog box, under Original, enter the pages to be replaced in the original document.

  6. In the Replace Pages dialog box, under Replacement, enter the first page of the replacement page range. The last page is calculated based on the number of pages to be replaced in the original document.

  7. Select OK.

Replace pages in a PDF using page thumbnail

  1. Open the PDF that contains the pages you want to replace, and then open the PDF that contains the replacement pages.

  2. Select All tools > Organize pages for both PDFs. The page thumbnails are displayed in the Document area.

  3. In the PDF containing the replacement pages, select a page or group of pages you want as replacements. For Windows, press Ctrl and then select the pages; for MacOS, press Command and then select the pages. 

  4. Press Ctrl (Windows) or command (macOS) and then drag the selected page thumbnails in the document area of the target document where thumbnails are displayed. Release the mouse button when the pointer is directly over the page number box of the page thumbnail you want to replace. The corresponding pages are highlighted.

    The pages you selected in the first document replace an equal number of pages in the second document. It starts at the page number that you selected to drop the new pages.

Renumber pages in a PDF

The page numbers on the document pages don't always match the page numbers that appear below the page thumbnails and in the right Page Navigation toolbar. Pages are numbered with integers, starting with page 1 for the first page of the document. Because some PDFs may contain front matter, such as a copyright page and table of contents, their body pages may not follow the numbering shown in the right Page Navigation toolbar.

Printed page numbering (top) compared to logical page numbering (bottom)

You can specify various numbering styles for a group of pages, for example, 1, 2, 3, or i, ii, iii, or a, b, c. You can also customize the numbering system by adding a prefix. For example, pages in Chapter 1 can be 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, and so on. Chapter 2 can have pages numbered as 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, and so on.

Note:

Using the Number Pages command affects only the page thumbnails on the Pages panel. You can physically add new page numbers to a PDF using the headers and footers feature.

  1. Select All tools from the global bar. Then select Organize pages > Page labels.

  2. Specify a page range. (Selected implies pages selected in the Page Thumbnails panel.)

  3. Select one of the following, and then select OK:

    Begin New Section

    Starts a new numbering sequence. Choose a style from the pop-up menu, and enter a starting page number for the section. Specify a Prefix, if desired.

    Extend Numbering Used In Preceding Section To Selected Pages

    Continues the numbering sequence from previous pages without interruption.

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