Can I split a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?

Knowing why also explains a few other things that go wrong with PDFs.

Why Reader will not do it

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a viewer. It opens PDFs, prints them, fills forms and lets you comment. It has no page tools at all. Those are in Acrobat Pro, which is a paid subscription. The two have nearly identical names and icons, so many people decide their file is broken when the menu item isn't there.

Nothing is wrong with your document. Reader doesn't include page tools.

Splitting needs no licence

This surprises people: taking pages out of a PDF only moves pages around. The pages are already complete in the file. Splitting copies the ones you asked for into a new document and saves it.

Nothing is redrawn or compressed again, so quality doesn't change, and you don't need any special software. That is why Split PDF can do it in a browser tab in about a second, with nothing installed.

The four things people mean

One file per page. A forty-page document becomes forty PDFs. Use it for scanned batches where each sheet is a separate record, like invoices, forms or delivery notes that went through the feeder together.

Extract a range. Pages 12 to 18 become one new PDF and the original stays as it was. Use it when someone asks for the section on liability from a long contract.

Cut at fixed points. A bundle of four ten-page documents becomes four files. Use it for anything put together from parts of known length.

Split into equal chunks. A 200-page file becomes four 50-page files. People usually do this because of file size limits, and it is often the wrong fix. See below.

Extracting is not editing

Splitting doesn't change the original. You get new files with copies of the pages you asked for.

That matters more than it sounds. If someone asks for part of a signed agreement, you want to send an extract and keep your full copy exactly as it was signed. Deleting pages from the original would be the wrong move, and you can't undo it once it is saved.

If you want a shorter version of the same document, use Delete Pages instead.

Getting the page numbers right

Nearly every mistake here is being one page out.

The cover page. A report with an unnumbered title page has a printed "page 1" that is the second sheet. Ranges are always by sheet position, so what the document calls page 1 might be page 2 to the tool. Work from the thumbnails, not from the printed numbers.

Ranges include both ends. "Pages 5 to 10" normally means six pages, including both 5 and 10. Check the first and last page of what comes out. That one check catches almost everything.

Roman numerals. Front matter numbered i, ii, iii is still sheets 1, 2, 3.

What survives a split

Page content always survives: text stays selectable, images keep their quality, fonts come across. Pages are copied as they are, so nothing gets worse.

Things that belonged to the whole document may not survive:

• Bookmarks pointing at pages now in a different file.
• Links inside the document whose target ended up in another file.
• Form fields, which belong to the whole document. A split form is the most likely to go wrong, so test it before sending.

When splitting is the wrong answer

Two situations often come up where splitting looks right but isn't.

The file is too big to email. Splitting gives you several files that each need sending and putting back together at the other end. Usually it's better to make the one file smaller: Compress PDF for the megabytes, or SmartShrink if the document is long but not heavy. A 40 MB scan compresses a lot. Splitting it only gives you four 10 MB files.

You want to reorder, not separate. Splitting and merging again to move a section is the long way round. A page-organising tool moves pages directly.

After splitting

Two things to do:

Give the files useful names. document-1.pdf to document-40.pdf will be hard to find things in later. If the pages are separate records, rename them by record while you still remember which is which.

Check where each file starts and ends. Open the first and last page of each file. A split that is one page out goes unnoticed until someone opens a file that starts mid-sentence.

Splitting and merging together

These two are opposites, and people often use them together. A typical rebuild: split the source into its sections, drop the ones you don't need, merge what is left with a new cover, then number it.

Do the numbering last. Page numbers are drawn onto pages permanently. If you number before the order is final, the numbers won't match the sequence, and the only fix is going back to the unnumbered originals.

Naming the pieces so they stay usable

A split that gives you page-1.pdf to page-48.pdf is correct but hard to use three weeks later.

If the parts mean something (chapters, months, departments), rename them straight away while you still remember which is which. Two minutes now saves ten minutes of opening files one at a time later.

Prefix with numbers if the order matters, so they sort correctly wherever they end up:

• 01-contract-terms.pdf
• 02-schedule-a.pdf
• 03-schedule-b.pdf

Splitting a scanned document

One thing to watch when the source is a scan.

Scanned PDFs are usually one large image per page, and splitting copies those images across as they are. So every part has its own full-size page images, and the sizes add up to roughly the original. Splitting doesn't make anything smaller.

If each part has to be small enough to email, compress after splitting. Compressing first also works, but compressing afterwards lets you compress each part only as much as it needs.

Splitting versus extracting versus deleting

People use these three as if they were the same, but each leaves you with something different.

The last column is the one that matters. If you might need the complete document later (a contract, or anything you have already sent to someone), use one of the first two and keep the original.