Page operations are structural surgery on a PDF: rotate pages that scan sideways, delete the pages that must not ship, extract a page or range into its own document, and insert pages from another PDF to merge documents. Alongside them sits the metadata and properties editor, where the document's title, author and keywords live. These are the tools for the moment a PDF's shape is wrong — the received file with twenty pages when you need five, the scan rotated 90 degrees, the two documents that should be one.
Rotate pages
- Open the PDF and find the offending pages in the thumbnail rail.
- Select a page, a range or all pages.
- Rotate in 90-degree steps until orientation is correct.
- Ctrl+S — rotation persists in the file.
This is the scan-repair tool: the faxed contract with three landscape pages in a portrait document, the deck printed two-up and scanned backwards. Fixed in seconds, and every reader shows the pages upright afterward.
Delete and extract pages
Deletion and extraction are two sides of the same selection:
- Delete removes pages from the document. Select in the thumbnail rail and delete; the document renumbers and re-renders.
- Extract produces a new PDF containing the selected page or range — the original stays whole. This is how you turn the 40-page report into the 5-page brief: extract pages 12-16, save the result under its own name, share only what the audience needs.
The pattern to remember: extract to share a slice, delete to ship the whole minus a slice. Both start from the same selection in the thumbnails.
Insert pages from another PDF
Merging is insert in reverse:
- Open the destination document.
- Choose insert pages from another PDF and pick the source file.
- Choose where the inserted pages land — at the end, or at a specific position.
- The pages arrive with their content intact; the combined document re-renders.
- Save under a name that reflects the merged set.
Typical merges: an appendix from a technical PDF into a proposal, this quarter's statement in front of last quarter's, the signed contract pages back into the unsigned original.
A merge-and-finalize sequence
A realistic composite that uses the whole toolkit in order:
- Insert the appendix PDF at the end of the main document.
- Rotate the two scanned pages that arrived sideways.
- Delete the blank separator pages the scan introduced.
- Extract the executive summary as its own file for the pre-read.
- Apply headers, footers and Bates numbering to the final structure.
- Check the metadata — title and author should describe the merged set, not the first source file.
Metadata: the properties editor
Page operations change the document's body; the metadata and properties editor changes its identity — title, author, subject, keywords as the PDF's document info. After a merge or extraction, this is worth thirty seconds: a file named "merged_final_v2.pdf" with title "Merged" is friction in every search and every inbox. The metadata guide covers the editor in full.
What to explore next
- Metadata and properties to finish the restructured file properly.
- Header, footer and Bates numbering to renumber after restructuring.
- Passwords and security before the restructured file leaves.