Combine PDF files, put the pages in any order, rotate or remove pages, and split a PDF into separate files. Your documents are processed in your browser and never uploaded.
Add one file to split or rearrange it, or several to merge them. Up to 300 MB in total. Your files stay on your device.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type or upload is sent to a server.
What happens when you merge PDFs
A PDF is not one long stream of text. It is a collection of numbered objects: a list of pages, and for each page a set of drawing instructions plus the fonts and images those instructions use. Merging means copying the page objects you want, together with everything they refer to, into a new file with a new page list. Splitting is the same operation with fewer pages in each new file.
Because the pages are copied rather than printed again, nothing about them changes. Text stays text, so you can still search it and select it. Scanned pages keep their original resolution. A font or logo used on many pages of one file is copied once and shared, so the result is usually about the size of the parts added together. Rotation works the same way: every page has a rotation setting that tells viewers which way up to show it, and rotating a page here changes that setting. It is the right fix for a page that was scanned sideways, and it costs nothing in quality.
What carries over, and what does not
Everything that belongs to a page comes along with it. A few things belong to the document as a whole, and those are not copied, because a merged file has no single original to take them from.
| Part of the PDF | In the new file |
|---|---|
| Text, fonts, images and drawings | Copied unchanged |
| Comments, highlights and sticky notes | Kept |
| Links to websites | Kept |
| Links to another page | Kept when that page is in the new file, disabled when it is not |
| Fillable form fields | Kept and still fillable; a repeated field name gets a number |
| Bookmarks (the outline) | Not carried over |
| Title, author and other document properties | Not carried over; the new file has none |
| Files attached to the document as a whole | Not carried over |
| Accessibility tags and page labels such as i, ii, iii | Not carried over |
| Digital signatures | The appearance is copied, but the signature no longer validates |
| Passwords and restrictions | Removed |
Links between pages need special care, and many merging tools get them wrong. A link that points at a page you did not keep would otherwise drag a hidden copy of that page into the file, making it larger and leaving a link that goes nowhere. This tool removes the destination of such a link instead, and points every other internal link at the copied page.
Password-protected PDFs
PDFs have two kinds of password. An open password (the PDF standard calls it the user password) encrypts the file, and nobody can read it without the password. A permissions password (the owner password) leaves the file readable by anyone and only asks software not to allow printing, copying or editing. Bank statements and many official forms use the second kind. Because the file opens without a password, the decryption key is effectively public, and the restriction is a request rather than a lock. This tool unlocks those files without asking. For a file with an open password, enter it in the box that appears next to the file name.
Either way the file you download is not encrypted. If the merged document needs protecting, add a password in your PDF reader before you share it, and send the password separately from the file.
Choosing how to split
Page numbers in the split options refer to the pages as they are arranged on screen, after any reordering or deleting, not to their numbers in the original files. There are three modes:
- Every page on its own makes one PDF per page, which suits pulling apart a batch of scanned receipts or letters.
- Every N pages cuts the document into equal parts. A stack of two-page forms scanned in one go becomes one file per form with N set to 2.
- Ranges makes one file per range you type, such as
1-3, 4-9, 10-. An open end like10-runs to the last page, ranges may overlap, and the files come out in the order you typed them.
Several files arrive in one zip, named after the original with zero-padded page numbers, so they sort in order in any file manager. To keep a single section rather than split everything, select its pages and use Extract.
Before you send the result
Open the downloaded file and page through it once, since that is quicker than any description of what changed. If it is too large to email, the size almost always comes from images. Re-compressing those images is the only real way to shrink it, and when you are building a PDF from photos it is easiest to do that first with the image compressor. Photos straight from a phone may also carry their GPS location, which the photo metadata remover strips out. And if the recipient needs to confirm that a contract or report arrived exactly as you sent it, share a SHA-256 checksum alongside it, made with the checksum calculator.
