Drop pages from a PDF, or keep only the ones you choose
Initializing in your browser…
A scanned PDF has blank separator pages between every chapter that should be deleted.
Input
scan.pdf · remove pages 4, 9, 14, 19
Output
scan.pdf, 4 pages gone, "keeps 20 (1-3, 5-8, 10-13, 15-18, 20)" stated first
Before anything runs the page writes out which pages survive, so you can check it against the document in front of you rather than trusting a counter. The listed pages are dropped and the rest are copied as objects, with no re-encoding, so each keeps its own size, its own rotation and its selectable text. A range you type wrong is reported rather than swallowed.
Delete pages from a PDF and get back a document that is otherwise untouched. Upload the file, choose the pages by clicking their pictures or by typing their numbers, read the sentence that says which pages will survive, and download the result. Two things make this different from the usual page remover. The selection can mean "remove these" or "keep these", whichever is fewer clicks for what you are doing. And nothing you type is silently swallowed: a range past the end of the document, a range written backwards, or something that is not a page number at all each produce a message saying what was understood.
Strip out the blank reverse sides a duplex scanner adds, in one click with the Even preset.
Switch to "keep", click the four pages the client asked for, and send those instead of the whole document.
Delete entire pages carrying information that should not be distributed. The pages are gone from the file, not hidden.
Type "1,3,5-7" to mark pages 1, 3 and 5 through 7. The page then reads "Removes 5 pages (1, 3, 5-7) and keeps 3 (2, 4, 8)", and the download holds exactly those three.
Switch the selector to "keep", click the three pages you want, and the counters flip: three kept, the rest removed. One click instead of an invert and a recount.
Typing "5-99" on a six page document selects pages 5 and 6 and says "5-99 was trimmed to 5-6; the document has 6 pages", instead of silently doing something else.
PDF Page Remover does not hide or flag pages, it rebuilds the document with pdf-lib. It computes the complement of your selection (every page NOT marked for removal), creates a new PDFDocument, and copies those pages into it in order. Because pages are copied as objects rather than re-rendered, nothing is rasterised: text stays selectable, vector graphics stay sharp, and each surviving page keeps its own paper size and its own /Rotate entry. Measured on a document of mixed Letter, A4, landscape and A5 pages, and on a document whose four pages carry four different rotations, both survive a removal unchanged.
The selection can be read either way round. "The pages I choose are the ones to remove" is the obvious reading; switching it to "keep" turns the same clicks into a list of survivors, which is what you want when three pages of a sixty page report are the ones you need.
Everything typed into the page box is accounted for. A range running past the end of the document is trimmed and the trim is reported. A range written backwards is read backwards and says so. A word, a decimal or a page number the document does not have is refused by name rather than being quietly rounded to a page you did not ask for. And before anything runs, the page states the result as a sentence: which pages go, and which pages are kept, both written out.
A removal that would take every page is refused, because a PDF has to have at least one.
Yes. The output is a new document built from the pages you kept, so the removed pages are not present in the file at all. This is not the same as hiding them, and text on a removed page cannot be recovered from the download.
No. Pages are copied as PDF objects with no re-encoding, so the text stays selectable and each surviving page keeps its own paper size and its own rotation. A document of mixed sizes comes out mixed, and a page that arrived sideways leaves sideways.
They are not carried over. A PDF stores them in the document catalog rather than on the pages, so rebuilding a document from copied pages leaves them behind. The same applies to a digital signature, which covers the whole original document and cannot survive pages being removed from it.
Because a PDF with no pages is not a valid PDF. If you want nothing from this document, you do not need a file from it.
PDF parsing and editing happen in your browser. Documents, and everything inside them, are never uploaded or stored remotely.