How to Split a PDF Into Separate Pages

You've got a 47-page PDF and you only need pages 12 through 15. Or maybe you need to send chapter 3 to one person and chapter 7 to another. Or perhaps your bank statement is one giant file and you need to pull out just the page for January.

Whatever the reason, splitting a PDF is one of those tasks that sounds like it should be simple — and honestly, it is. You just need to know where to go.

Method 1: Split Online (Fastest Option)

If you want to get this done in under a minute without installing anything, use a browser-based tool. Here's the process:

  1. Open Peaceful PDF's Split tool
  2. Drop your PDF onto the page
  3. Choose how you want to split — by page range, every N pages, or extract individual pages
  4. Click split
  5. Download your result

Done. Your file stays in your browser the whole time — nothing gets uploaded to any server. I use this method probably three or four times a week, and it hasn't let me down yet.

Why Would You Need to Split a PDF?

More reasons than you'd think. Here are some real-world situations I've run into:

Sharing Specific Sections

You've got a 200-page report and your colleague only needs the executive summary (pages 1-5). Don't make them download the whole thing. Split out the pages they need and send just those. It's faster, smaller, and more professional.

Email Attachment Size Limits

Most email providers cap attachments at 25MB. If your PDF is larger than that, splitting it into smaller chunks is one way to get around the limit. Sure, you could use a file sharing service, but sometimes email is just easier — especially when you're dealing with people who aren't tech-savvy.

(Side note: if the file is huge because of image quality, you might want to compress it first. That might solve the size problem without splitting.)

Organizing Scanned Documents

Scanners love creating one big PDF out of everything you feed through the document feeder. But that stack of paper was actually five different documents. Splitting lets you separate them back out into individual files.

Legal and Compliance Requirements

In legal work, you often need to file specific pages as separate exhibits. In healthcare, you might need to separate a patient's records into different categories. Splitting makes this painless.

Removing Sensitive Pages

Maybe page 8 of your document has information that shouldn't be shared with everyone. Rather than redacting, sometimes it's easier to just split the PDF and leave that page out entirely. You can also use the delete pages tool if you want to remove specific pages from the middle of a document.

Different Ways to Split

"Splitting a PDF" can mean different things depending on what you need. Let me break down the common scenarios.

Extract Specific Pages

This is the most common use case. You want pages 5, 7, and 12-15 as a new PDF. Just specify which pages you want and you get a new file with only those pages. The original stays untouched.

Split Into Individual Pages

This takes your PDF and creates a separate file for every single page. A 30-page document becomes 30 one-page PDFs. Useful for batch processing, like when you need to upload individual pages to different systems.

Split Every N Pages

Want to break a 100-page document into 10-page chunks? This is your option. It's handy for creating manageable sections of long documents — like splitting a textbook into chapters of roughly equal length.

Split by File Size

Some tools let you split based on a target file size. "Give me chunks that are no larger than 10MB each." This is perfect for working around email attachment limits.

Method 2: Using Preview on Mac

If you're on a Mac, you've already got a decent PDF splitter built right in. Preview doesn't call it "splitting," but you can do it with drag and drop.

  1. Open your PDF in Preview
  2. Make sure the sidebar is showing page thumbnails (View → Thumbnails)
  3. Select the pages you want — click one, then Command-click others, or Shift-click for a range
  4. Drag the selected thumbnails to your desktop or a Finder window

Preview creates a new PDF with just those pages. It's surprisingly elegant for something built into the OS. The downside is that it's a bit fiddly when you're working with lots of pages — dragging 50 thumbnails isn't great.

Method 3: Print to PDF (Works Everywhere)

This is the "works on literally any computer" method. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

  1. Open the PDF in any viewer
  2. Go to File → Print (or Ctrl+P / Command+P)
  3. Set the page range to just the pages you want
  4. Instead of printing to a real printer, choose "Save as PDF" or "Microsoft Print to PDF"
  5. Save the file

The catch with this method is that it essentially "re-renders" the document. Some formatting might shift slightly, links might stop working, and form fields will be flattened. For simple documents it's fine. For complex ones with interactive elements, use a proper splitting tool.

Method 4: Command Line (For Power Users)

If you're comfortable with the terminal, there are some great command-line tools for splitting PDFs. My favorite is pdftk (PDF Toolkit).

Install pdftk

  • Mac: brew install pdftk-java
  • Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install pdftk
  • Windows: Download from the pdftk website

Common Commands

Extract pages 5-10:

pdftk input.pdf cat 5-10 output pages5-10.pdf

Extract specific pages:

pdftk input.pdf cat 1 3 5 7 output odd-pages.pdf

Split into individual pages:

pdftk input.pdf burst

The command line approach is great for automation. If you regularly need to split PDFs as part of a workflow — say, processing incoming scans — you can script it. I have a little bash script that takes multi-page scans from my scanner's output folder and automatically splits them into individual pages. Took 10 minutes to set up and has saved me hours.

Method 5: Google Chrome (Secret Feature)

Here's a trick almost nobody knows about. Chrome has a built-in PDF viewer, and you can use it to split PDFs:

  1. Open the PDF in Chrome (drag it into a browser tab)
  2. Press Ctrl+P (or Command+P on Mac)
  3. Under "Pages," select "Custom" and enter your page range (e.g., "3-7")
  4. Change the destination to "Save as PDF"
  5. Click Save

It's basically the print-to-PDF method, but Chrome does a better job preserving formatting than most other viewers. Plus, you don't need to install anything — Chrome is already on most people's computers.

After Splitting: What to Do Next

Once you've split your PDF, you might want to:

  • Rename the files clearly. "split_output_001.pdf" isn't helpful. Name them something meaningful like "Q4-Report-Executive-Summary.pdf."
  • Check the pages. Open each new file and make sure you got the right pages. It's easy to be off by one.
  • Remove metadata. The split files might inherit metadata from the original. If you're sharing them externally, consider cleaning the metadata.
  • Compress if needed. Sometimes split files are still larger than you'd expect, especially if they contain high-resolution images. Run them through a compressor to shrink them down.

Splitting vs. Deleting Pages: What's the Difference?

Good question. They're related but not the same:

  • Splitting creates new PDF files from selected pages. The original file is unchanged.
  • Deleting pages removes specific pages from a PDF, giving you one file with those pages gone.

If you want to keep most of the document but remove a few pages, deleting pages is usually easier than splitting. If you want to pull out specific sections as separate files, splitting is the way to go.

Can You Split a Password-Protected PDF?

It depends on the type of protection. If the PDF has a permissions password (restricts editing/printing but lets you open it), most splitting tools can still work with it. If it has an open password (you need a password just to view it), you'll need to unlock it first before splitting.

This should go without saying, but only unlock and split PDFs that you have permission to access. The unlock tool exists for situations like "I set a password on this document three years ago and now I can't remember it."

Putting It Back Together

Split too aggressively? Need to recombine pages later? That's what the merge tool is for. You can take your split files and merge them back together in any order. It's like undo for splitting.

In fact, the split-then-merge workflow is really powerful. Split a document into individual pages, remove the ones you don't want, reorder the rest, and merge them back together. You end up with exactly the document you need.

Final Thoughts

Splitting PDFs is one of those skills you don't need until you really need it — and then you need it right now. Bookmark the split tool so it's there when that moment comes.

For most people, the online method is going to be the fastest and easiest. Open the page, drop your file, pick your pages, done. No installs, no accounts, no uploading your files to someone else's server.

And if you find yourself splitting PDFs regularly, take 10 minutes to learn the command-line method. Future you will appreciate the time saved.