Organise PDF pages: merge, split, reorder and stamp, all in one place

The 6 page jobs, mapped to their tools

When a PDF has the wrong pages, the wrong order or the wrong markings, the fix is always 1 of 6 jobs. Name the job and the tool picks itself:

1. Combine files into 1. Merge PDF joins any number of files in the order you set.
2. Take a file apart. Split PDF cuts 1 file into several: 1 file per page, every N pages, or the page ranges you type.
3. Fix order and rotation. Organise PDF lists every page; move pages up and down, turn, copy or remove them, add blank pages, or reverse the whole order in 1 click.
4. Remove pages. Delete PDF pages takes chosen pages out of the file, their text and pictures included, and keeps the other bookmarks, the metadata and the form fields.
5. Pull pages out. Extract PDF pages copies chosen pages into a new file and leaves the original untouched.
6. Stamp something on the pages. Add page numbers handles numbering and header and footer text; Watermark PDF handles DRAFT marks, stamps and logos.

The rest of this page walks through each job with the decisions that trip people up, then says plainly what these tools cannot do, because that matters just as much.

Combine files: merge takes as many as you have

Drop the files, put them in order, download 1 PDF. Three things about this merge are worth knowing before you start:

There is no file count cap. 2 files or 60 exhibits, the merge takes them all in 1 go. Online mergers cap free use because their servers do the work and servers cost money. Here your device does the work, so there is nothing to meter.

1 bookmark per file, with the files’ own bookmarks under it. The result gets an outline with 1 entry per source file, pointing at its first page, and each file’s chapter bookmarks nested under its entry, so a 200-page merge of 3 reports can be navigated by report and by chapter. Switch Bookmark per file off and the files’ own bookmarks follow one another at the top level instead. Links from one page to another keep working, and form fields stay fillable.

Mixed page sizes go in as they are. An A4 lease next to a Letter cover stays A4 next to Letter. That is correct behaviour, even when it looks odd in a viewer, because resizing pages changes their content’s scale. If the result must look uniform, resizing after the merge is its own job with its own trade-offs, and the guide on merging files with different page sizes walks through them.

A worked example: Jane Cooper is handing in an apartment application in Vienna. The lease from the landlord, the invoice from her employer’s payroll export and the scanned receipt from the deposit are 3 files from 3 sources. One drag into the merge, a quick reorder so the lease leads, and the agency gets 1 tidy file. The whole application workflow, from phone scan to final send, is in Everyday PDF jobs.

Merge and split again, or reorder the pages?

Some jobs look like a merge but are really page surgery. You want the 48-page report with the summary moved to the front, 2 appendix pages gone and a blank divider page added. Done with merge and split, that is several splits and merges. Done in Organise PDF, it is 1 pass: the page list shows all 48 pages, you move the summary up with its Up button, remove the 2 appendix pages, add a blank page and move it into place, and apply once. Organise also copies a page with +, turns pages a quarter turn at a time, and reverses the whole order with Reverse the order.

Organise works on a numbered list, not thumbnails. When you want to see the pages while you move them, open the file in the editor: its thumbnail rail reorders pages by dragging, turns, copies and deletes them, and adds a blank page after any page, pages from another PDF, or pictures as pages, and the save writes them in that order.

The rule of thumb:

• Whole files in, 1 file out: merge. The file list is the unit, and you order files, not pages.
• Anything that touches individual pages: Organise, or the editor’s page rail. Reorder, turn, delete and insert in 1 view, 1 save, 1 output file. Organise keeps the bookmarks, pointing at the pages’ new places, and the title and author.

Organise pagesReorder, rotate, delete, insert. Free, runs on your device.Open

The page list is also where scan disasters get fixed, which gets its own section below.

Split, extract or delete: the 1-line rule

Three tools remove pages from your sight, and people regularly pick the wrong one. The 1-line rule:

• Keep most, lose some: delete pages. Pages 9 to 12 of the 48-page report are an internal draft; delete them and save the other 44 as the same document.
• Take some, leave the original alone: extract pages. The lawyer wants pages 3 to 7 of the lease; extract copies them into a new 5-page file and the 12-page original stays exactly as it was.
• Need every part as its own file: split.

Split cuts 3 ways:

1. Every page. A 48-page file becomes 48 single-page files, which portals that want 1 upload per exhibit demand. The names are padded (report-01.pdf to report-48.pdf) so a folder sorts in reading order.
2. Every N pages. Every 2 suits double-sided invoices; every 10 cuts a long scan into handy parts.
3. By page ranges. Type 1-12, 13-29, 30- and get 3 files. Ranges can overlap, and an open end runs to the last page.

Split PDFBy ranges, every N pages, by bookmarks or size. Free, runs on your device.Open

Split does not cut by bookmarks or by a target file size. For a chapter split, read the chapter start pages off the bookmarks in your viewer and type them as ranges. For a portal’s size cap, compress first; if 1 file still will not fit, split by ranges and compress each part.

One more thing about delete: it works on the file itself rather than building a new one, so the bookmarks, metadata and form fields stay. The deleted pages’ text and pictures leave the file, so it gets smaller, and the bookmarks and links to those pages go with them. A chapter deleted with all its sections leaves the outline; a chapter heading whose own page went but some of whose sections stay remains as a heading over them. Extract and Split keep the bookmarks to the pages they take, too.

Numbering, headers and watermarks

Stamping jobs put something on every page instead of moving pages around. Two tools cover them.

Add page numbers does numbering and running text:

• Numbers go on straight, even on rotated pages. A sideways scan in a portrait file still gets an upright, readable number in the corner you chose. Tools that stamp before resolving rotation print the number sideways along the edge.
• 4 formats and 6 places: 1, Page 1, 1 of 12 or Page 1 of 12, in any corner or centred at the top or bottom, with the first number, size and margin yours to set.
• Header and footer text goes in the same pass, centred at the top and the bottom, with the page number, page count, date and file name filled in where you type them.
• The cover can be skipped. Leave page 1 bare and start counting on page 2 as page 1, which is what reports with a title page need.

Watermark PDF does text marks:

• DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL or your own words, diagonally across the page or straight, in grey, red or blue, small to large.
• 4 strengths, from faint to strong, so the mark reads as a mark and the text under it stays readable.
• All pages or a range, such as only the pages that go to the client.

It does not place a logo picture or tile the mark across the page; a logo goes on page by page in the editor.

Both stamps draw into the page content itself, not into an annotation layer that some viewers and printers quietly skip. What goes on, prints.

Fixing a bad scan stack

Scanners produce the same 4 page problems over and over, and each has a quick fix:

• The stack came out backwards. The feeder read the pile bottom-up, so page 48 is first. In Organise PDF, choose Reverse the order and Apply; our 500-page test file came back reversed in half a second. The backwards scan guide covers reversing part of a file and many files at once.
• A few pages are sideways. Choose Turn next to just those pages in Organise, or type their numbers under Some in Rotate PDF; the other pages stay put. When the whole file is sideways, Rotate PDF turns everything in 1 click, and the rotation is written into the file, so it opens upright everywhere, not just in the viewer you fixed it in.
• Every other page is blank. A duplex scanner read the backs of single-sided originals. Remove blank pages finds them automatically, and it knows the difference between a truly empty page and a scanned blank, which is never pure white: there are punch holes, specks and bleed-through on it. Three settings, Empty, Nearly empty and Scanned blank, cover clean paper through rough scans, and the tool never removes a page with real text on it. The result lists the pages it took out, and your original file stays as it was.
• The pages are different sizes. A receipt photographed on a phone lands next to A4 pages. Merging keeps each page’s own size, which is honest but looks ragged; whether to leave it or unify the sizes is covered in the guide on merging PDFs with different page sizes.

40 files at once: batch mode

Month end arrives and there are 40 invoices to stamp, or a folder of scans to rotate. Running a tool 40 times is not the answer; batch mode is. Point a tool at many files, or drop a whole folder on it, and subfolders are walked too. The options you set once apply to every file.

While it runs, progress reads “file 12 of 40”, so a long batch is never a black box. A damaged file does not kill the run: it is listed as not done, and the other 39 finish. The result keeps a before-and-after line for every file. At the end, take the results as 1 zip, or, in browsers that allow it, save them into a folder you choose, each output under its own name. (Organise itself works on 1 file at a time.)

Batch is also where “free” gets tested. Competitors charge for batch because 40 files means 40 uploads and 40 server jobs. Here, 40 files means your device working for a few minutes, which costs us nothing and you nothing.

The honest part: what organising cannot do

A page tool moves, removes and stamps pages. It does not reach inside them, and a few jobs that look like page jobs are not:

• Content on the wrong page stays wrong. If paragraph 4 belongs on page 9 and sits on page 10, no amount of reordering fixes it. That is an editing job, inside the page.
• A merged file adds its parts’ sizes up. Merge 10 scans of 4 MB and the result is about 40 MB; merging cannot make bytes disappear. When the combined file is too big to send, compress it after merging: Make a PDF smaller has the real numbers on what shrinks and what does not.
• Your computer may already do the small jobs. On a Mac, Preview merges 2 files by dragging thumbnails between sidebars, free and offline; for a quick 2-file join on a Mac, use it. Windows has no built-in merge, which is why half these searches exist.
• Booklets and handouts are print jobs, not page jobs. Booklet page order and several pages per sheet live in Print a PDF right.
• The only real limit is your device’s memory. There is no page cap and no file cap, but a 900 MB scan on a browser with about 2 GB of working memory is near the edge, and the tool tells you so instead of crashing. On a phone, that edge arrives sooner than on a laptop.

Why there are no limits here

Every tool on this page runs in your browser, on your device. The file is read locally, processed locally and saved locally; no byte of it is sent anywhere. That is not a policy promise, it is the architecture, and you can check it yourself: run a tool once, so its engine is in your browser, then turn Wi-Fi off and run the job again. It still works.

That is also the whole explanation for the missing limits. A service that uploads your files pays for every megabyte and every CPU second, so it meters you: file caps, daily task caps, watermarks until you pay. Nothing uploads here, so there is nothing to meter. Merge 60 files, split a 500-page report, stamp 40 invoices in a batch; the only bill is a few seconds of your own device’s time.