Organize pages

The Organize Pages tool provides a simple and flexible way to rearrange pages in a multi-page PDF. Pages can be moved, deleted, duplicated, or selected individually. It is also possible to move or copy pages from one PDF document to another.

Opening the "Organize pages" tool

The Organize Pages tool can be opened in one of the following ways:

  1. In the menu bar select Tools > Organize Pages.
  2. In the Switchboard, open the Pages group, select Organize Pages, and click Execute.
  3. Use the keyboard shortcut: Windows: Ctrl + Shift + M, macOS: Cmd + Shift + M

The "Organize pages" window

The Organize Pages window consists of the following areas:

  1. Document pages: The top row displays all pages in the currently open PDF.
  2. Navigation controls: For documents with a large number of pages, the arrow buttons on the right can be used to scroll through the page previews.
  3. View options: The drop-down menu in the lower-right corner controls how pages are displayed (Thumbnails, Page Numbers, Both)
  4. New document area:  Below the original document is an initially empty row where selected pages can be dragged to create a new PDF document. The new document is named New Document 1 by default. The document name can be changed when it is saved.
  5. Discard area:  Pages placed in the Discard row are removed from the document.
  6. Action buttons:  Click Apply to apply the changes or Cancel to close the tool without making any changes.

Organizing pages

Creating one or more new PDF documents by rearranging pages is a straightforward process:

  1. Drag pages from the original document into the New Document 1 row. As soon as pages are added, a new empty row (New Document 2, and so on) is created automatically. An empty row is always available at the bottom of the list. Rows that no longer contain pages are hidden automatically. To duplicate a page, hold the Alt key while dragging it.
  2. Pages can be reordered within a row by dragging them to the desired position.
  3. Pages can be removed from the document by dragging them to the Discard row.
  4. Starting with pdfToolbox 17, the gear menu provides quick access to the Page Selector. It can be used to jump directly to a specific page or to select pages using the flexible page selection functionality. This is particularly useful when working with large PDF documents.
  5. Click Apply to complete the operation.

The altered files

pdfToolbox shows all altered files:

  1. The original document (if applicable, minus the pages moved to the new documents or those that were removed.)
  2. New Document 1 with the selected pages in the desired order.
  3. New Document 2 with the selected pages in the desired order.
  4. At the bottom of the window, you can see that the file has been modified.

Saving the new documents

Neues Dokument sichern

You can then save the new document(s) under a new name.

Note: Do not save the original document when closing the window if you want to keep it in its original form.