How to delete pages from a PDF

Remove pages in four steps

1. Open the Delete Pages tool and select or drag in your PDF.
2. Read the page count the tool shows after loading, then confirm which physical sheets you want gone.
3. Type those pages in the box: 3 for one page, 2, 4 for separate pages, 2-4 for a run of pages.
4. Press Delete pages, download the new file, and check it against the list further down this page.

The tool runs in your browser. Your PDF is not uploaded for this task, and the file on your disk is never modified: you always get a new document to download, so the original is still there if you mis-type a page.

A worked example

Take a five-page document: a cover sheet, two pages of content, a blank verso left behind by a duplex scanner, and an appendix. Numbering counts physical sheets from the front, so those pages are 1 to 5 in that order.

Commas and hyphens combine freely, so 1, 3, 5 and 2-4 are both valid, and a reversed range like 4-2 is read the same as 2-4 rather than rejected. The tool reports what it did ("Removed 2 pages. 3 remain."), which is the fastest way to catch a typo before you download.

Printed page numbers are not the numbers to type

This is the most common way people delete the wrong sheet. The numbers you type count physical sheets, which rarely match the folio printed on the page. A title page, a blank verso and a Roman-numbered preface can easily push the printed "page 1" onto physical sheet four. Use your PDF viewer's own "page X of Y" counter as you scroll to the sheet you want gone, and type that number. The Delete Pages tool shows the total page count once your file loads, which is a useful cross-check that you are reading the same document the tool is.

What the tool rejects, and what the message means

These are the errors you can actually hit, taken from running the tool against a five-page test file:

Nothing is downloaded when you see one of these messages, so a rejected entry costs you nothing. Correct the box and press the button again.

Password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first

If your file is encrypted, the tool stops and tells you: "This file is password-protected. Remove its password first, then try again." We tested this with both a file that demands a password to open and a file that opens freely but blocks printing and copying. Both were refused, so an owner-restricted file needs unlocking too, even though it opens normally in a viewer.

For a document you own or are authorized to unlock, run it through Unlock PDF first, then delete pages from the unlocked copy. Note that Unlock PDF is one of our server-processed tools, so it uploads your file. Our guide to unlocking a PDF covers that trade-off.

What else changes when a PDF is rebuilt

Removing a page means writing a new document from the pages you kept, which has consequences beyond the page list. Here is what we measured on test files:

• Document properties are carried over. Title, Author, Subject, Keywords and Creator are copied to the new file, and the original creation date is kept. Nothing is invented: if your source had no title, the output has none either. Because these details travel with the file, deleting a page is not a way to remove author information. For that, use the PDF Metadata tool, which clears six standard fields and is itself not a sanitization guarantee.
• Interactive form fields do not survive. On a test form with a fillable field on page 1 and another on page 2, deleting page 2 left no fillable fields anywhere, including on the page we kept. The boxes still appear as part of the page's appearance, but they can no longer be typed into. If a form needs to stay interactive, keep an unmodified copy and treat the trimmed file as a flat document.
• Links on pages you keep do survive. A link annotation on a kept page was still present in the output of our test.

The pages you remove are genuinely absent from the new file rather than hidden. We checked this by rebuilding the output with unreferenced objects deliberately preserved, and the deleted page's data was not there. That is a point about ordinary page editing, not a redaction guarantee, for the reasons in the next section.

If you wanted a smaller file, deletion is usually the wrong lever

A PDF's weight normally sits in a few embedded images, not in the number of pages. In one test, a 123 KB file carried a single image on page 1 and four text-only pages. Deleting all four text pages left roughly 123 KB, essentially no change. Deleting the one image page instead brought the file to under 1 KB.

So if an email bounced for size, find the heavy pages rather than the many pages. If the weight is in content you need to keep, compressing the PDF is the lever that moves megabytes, and reducing to a target size helps when you have a hard limit to hit.

Deleting a page is not redaction

Removing a whole page omits that page from the new document, which is appropriate when the entire sheet can go. It is not a forensic redaction or a certified sanitization workflow, and it does nothing about sensitive text that appears on a page you are keeping. Drawing a black box over that text does not remove it either.

This site does not offer partial-content redaction. For legal, medical or regulated disclosures, use dedicated redaction software and follow the review process your situation requires. Our article on why a black box is not redaction explains what actually removes content.

Check the result before you send it

Thirty seconds of checking prevents the two expensive mistakes: sending a file that still contains the page you meant to remove, or sending one that is missing a page you needed.

1. Open the downloaded file, not the original, and confirm the page count is what you expect.
2. Look at the sheets either side of each gap, to be sure the cut landed where you intended.
3. Check that the page you removed is genuinely absent, including in any contents list or index that still references it.
4. If the document had a fillable form, test a field. If the document had a digital signature, check whether it still validates, since rebuilding a PDF can invalidate one.
5. Keep the original until the trimmed copy has been accepted by whoever needs it.

Delete or extract? Pick the shorter list

Deleting and extracting are mirror images of each other, and the better choice is simply whichever means typing fewer numbers.

Cutting 30 pages out of 40 by listing ranges is tedious. Extracting the 10 you want is faster and less error-prone.

Questions people ask

How do I delete pages from a PDF without Acrobat? Use the Delete Pages tool in your browser. There is no Acrobat licence, software install, account or watermark involved, and the file is not uploaded for this task.

Can I delete non-adjacent pages in one pass? Yes. Combine commas and hyphens, so 1, 5, 9-11 removes page 1, page 5, and pages 9 through 11 together.

How do I remove blank pages? There is no automatic blank-page detection. Scroll the document, note the physical numbers of the blank sheets, and list them. Duplex scans often put a blank on every second sheet, so the pattern is usually predictable once you find the first one.

Will the pages I keep look different? The kept pages are copied into the new document and are not re-compressed, so text stays selectable and images keep their resolution. Interactive form fields are the exception, as described above.

Can I undo a deletion? Your original file on disk is never changed. Reopen it and start again.

Is there a limit? At least one page must remain in the finished document, and the tool accepts PDFs up to 100 MB. Very large or complex files take longer, because the work happens on your own device.

Does deleting a page delete the file? No. This tool removes pages from inside a PDF and gives you a new document. To delete a PDF file itself, use your computer's file manager.

Related tools

After trimming you might reach for Extract Pages to save a keeper section separately, Reorder Pages to tidy the sequence, or Merge PDF to fold the result into a larger document. For the wider question of which tools upload your files, read are online PDF tools safe?