Reorder the pages of a PDF
Drop in a PDF and every page appears as a thumbnail. Drag them into the right order or use the arrows under each page. One press reverses the whole document or interleaves the fronts and backs of a double sided scan.
How to use it#
- Drop a PDF onto the box above, or click it to choose one.
- Drag a page to where it belongs, or use the arrows to move it one place. To change every page at once, press Reverse the order, or Backs in order or Backs reversed for a double sided scan.
- Remove any page that should not be there at all, and press ↻ under a sideways page to turn it.
- Download the PDF in its new order.
Where pages end up in the wrong order#
Most out of order PDFs come from a scanner. A double sided document fed through a single sided feeder comes out as every front followed by every back, and a stack put in upside down comes out last page first. Both have a button of their own here, so a forty page scan does not mean forty drags. Merging several files in the wrong sequence does the same thing at a larger scale.
The numbers in the corner of each thumbnail show the position the page will have in the file you download, and the line underneath says where it started, so it is clear at a glance which pages have moved.
Nothing on the pages changes#
Pages are copied into the new order exactly as they were. Text stays selectable, images keep their quality, and web links on a page still work, because nothing is redrawn or re-compressed. The file comes out about the size it went in.
What does not follow the pages is anything printed on them. A page number in the footer is part of the page's drawing, so it keeps saying what it said before, and a contents page will list the old sequence until the document is regenerated from its source.
Drag on a computer, arrows anywhere#
On a desktop, drag a thumbnail and drop it on the page it should sit in front of. On a phone, where dragging a small card with a thumb is fiddly and easy to get wrong, the arrows under each page move it one place at a time and cannot drop it somewhere unintended.
Both change the same list, so they can be mixed freely, and removing or turning a page along the way is fine too. Undo takes back the last change, and Start again returns everything to how it arrived.
Frequently asked questions#
Is the PDF uploaded anywhere?
#
No. The pages are read and the new document is assembled by your own browser, in this tab. The file never leaves your machine. The only thing the page fetches is its own code for reading PDFs, which your browser's network panel will show.
How do I fix a double sided scan where all the backs came last?
#
Press one of the two double sided scan buttons, which take the first half of the pages as the fronts and the second half as the backs and interleave them: front, back, front, back. Press Backs in order if the backs start with the back of the first sheet. Press Backs reversed if they start with the back of the last sheet, which is what usually happens when the stack is turned over to scan the other side. Check a pair of thumbnails, and if they are wrong, press Undo and try the other button.
How do I reverse the page order of a PDF?
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Press Reverse the order, and the last page comes first. It reverses the pages as they stand, including any you have moved or removed, and pressing it again puts them back. The download is ready as soon as the thumbnails change.
Can I remove pages at the same time?
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Yes. Every page has a Remove button, and removed pages are listed underneath with a button to put each one back. The download contains the pages in the list, in the order shown, and nothing else.
Will bookmarks and the table of contents follow the pages?
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No. The new file is built from the pages themselves, so bookmarks from the original are not carried across, and a contents page is just another page with text on it. If those matter, reorder the source document and export it again.