A form asks for one page of your result card. A teacher wants only chapter 4. Your 200-page PDF is far too big to send. In all these cases you do not need the whole document, only a few pages. This guide shows how to take out exactly the pages you need and save them as a new, smaller PDF.
When Does This Help?
- Online applications: upload only the page with your photo, ID or marks.
- Study: send a single chapter or a set of questions instead of a full book.
- Work: share one invoice or one page of a report without exposing the rest.
- Size limits: a short PDF is much smaller than a long one.
Step 1: Find the Page Numbers
Open the PDF in any viewer and note the page numbers you need. Count pages as the viewer does, from the very first page. A book with a printed number “12” may actually be page 18 of the PDF, because cover pages are counted too.
Step 2: Extract the Pages
- Open PaperDesk Split PDF.
- Click “Choose PDF File” and select your document.
- Type the pages you want in the box.
- Click “Split PDF”. A file named paperdesk-split.pdf downloads.
How to Write the Page Numbers
- 5 gives only page 5.
- 2-4 gives pages 2, 3 and 4.
- 1, 6, 9 gives pages 1, 6 and 9.
- 1, 3, 5-7 gives pages 1, 3, 5, 6 and 7.
Use only numbers, commas and dashes. The new file always shows the pages in their normal order, even if you type them differently.
I tested Split PDF with a 4-page practice PDF of 6,789.4 KB. I typed 3 in the page box, and the new file was 1,697 KB, about a quarter of the original because it held one page out of four.
Step 3: Check the New File
- Open paperdesk-split.pdf and confirm it has the right pages.
- Check the page count and the file size.
- Keep your original file. The tool never changes it.
Pages are copied as they are, so text stays selectable and images keep their original quality.
Common Problems
- Invalid page error. You typed a page higher than the total, a zero, or something that is not a number. Check the total page count.
- The file will not open. It may be password-protected. Remove the password first.
- You need several separate files. The tool creates one new PDF per run. Run it again with a different set of pages each time.
- Still too large. Use Compress PDF or read our guide on reducing PDF size.