Split a long PDF into chapters, by page ranges

Ranges or bookmarks: what you can use today

Split PDF has 3 ways to cut: Every page, Every N pages and Ranges. A chapter split is a Ranges job. Cutting by bookmarks with 1 click is planned, not built; this guide does it by hand, which on a report with 6 chapters takes about a minute.

First, find out whether the file has bookmarks at all. Drop it on Inspect: the Outline section lists the top-level bookmarks, or says “none”. If there are bookmarks, open the file in your PDF reader, click each chapter bookmark and note the page number it jumps to. If there are none, flip through the file and note where each chapter’s title page sits. Either way you end with a short list of start pages.

Inspect PDFFonts, images, metadata, why it is big. Free, runs on your device.Open

Split into chapters, step by step

Our 48-page test report has a cover and contents on pages 1 and 2, then 5 chapters starting on pages 3, 9, 13, 30 and 41.

1. Drop the PDF on Split PDF above.
2. Under Cut it, choose Ranges. The hint shows how many pages the file has.
3. Turn the start pages into ranges: each chapter runs from its start page to the page before the next start. Here that is 1-2, 3-8, 9-12, 13-29, 30-40, 41-.
4. Press Split.
5. Choose Download all (6) as zip, or Save to a folder where your browser offers it. Each file also has its own Download button.

The 6 files come out as report-1-2.pdf, report-3-8.pdf, report-9-12.pdf, report-13-29.pdf, report-30-40.pdf and report-41-.pdf. On our test laptop the whole split took 171 milliseconds, and the result says “Each part keeps the bookmarks to its own pages: 10 bookmarks in all”.

How do ranges work?

• A range is 2 numbers with a hyphen: 13-29 is pages 13 to 29.
• A single page is a range too: 1, 2 gives 2 one-page files.
• Open-ended ranges: 41- runs to the last page, and -12 starts at page 1. Handy when you do not know the exact page count.
• Overlap is allowed: 1-12, 10-20 makes 2 files that both hold pages 10 to 12. Useful when a chapter ends halfway down the page where the next one starts.
• Pages beyond the end are ignored: 41-60 on a 48-page file gives pages 41 to 48. A range that names no page at all is skipped.
• Several files at once: drop 3 reports and the same ranges cut each of them, so this works for a set of files with the same layout (monthly reports with fixed sections).

For chapters of equal length (a workbook with 12-page units), Every N pages is quicker: 12 pages per file on a 48-page file gives report-01-12.pdf to report-37-48.pdf, numbered so they sort in order.

What does each chapter file keep?

We split our 48-page report, which has 10 bookmarks (6 chapters, 4 sections) and 8 links that jump between pages, and looked inside every piece:

	In each chapter file?
Text, pictures, fonts, page size and rotation	Yes, copied as they were; nothing is re-rendered
Hidden layers	Yes, still hidden
Bookmarks	Yes, the ones to its own pages: the Results file has Results and its Tables section, pointing at its pages 1 and 8
Links that jump to another page	Yes within the chapter (4 of the 8 links); a link to a page in another chapter is dropped
Links to websites	The link stays with its page
Form fields	Yes, on the pages that came along, and still fillable
Title and author in the file’s properties	No: Split sets no title, so name the files well

So a chapter file keeps the pages and the part of the outline that belongs to them. That suits a chapter you send to a reviewer or upload to a portal. If the chapter files must carry the report’s title in their properties, use Extract pages once per chapter: Extract keeps the title, author, subject and keywords.

Naming the files after their chapters

The files are named by range, not by chapter title, because the tool does not read titles. Rename them after downloading (report-3-8.pdf to 1-summary.pdf). Start each name with a number and they stay in reading order in any folder. If you only need 1 chapter, Extract pages with 13-29 gives that 1 file and leaves the original untouched; the guide to sending only some pages covers that case.

Where it stops

Split cannot find chapters by itself: it does not cut by bookmarks yet, and it does not read headings. A scanned book has no bookmarks and no text until you run OCR, and even then the chapter starts are yours to find.

Links that point from one chapter to another can never work in separate files; that is what splitting means, so Split drops them. Links within the same chapter keep working. If the chapters are read on screen with cross-references (a manual with “see page 14” in another chapter), keep the full file available too.

Size is bounded by your device, not by us: the file is split in your browser, so there is no upload and no file cap, but a 2,000-page scan needs the memory to open it. For other ways to take a file apart, see the guide to organising PDF pages.