Remove Pages from PDF Online

A PDF page remover that shows you the pages

Use Jobsixo to remove pages from a PDF online without installing anything. Every page of your document appears as a thumbnail, so you choose what to delete by looking at it instead of counting page numbers. Tick the pages you do not want, remove them, and the pages you kept stay in their original order.

It suits the usual reasons for trimming a file: a blank sheet your scanner slipped in, a duplicated page, a cover nobody asked for, or an annexure that should not go to the recipient. If you have searched for a way to delete pages from a PDF or erase a page from a PDF, this is that job, done on a board where you can see each page before it goes.

How to remove pages from a PDF

1. 1
   Drop your PDF on the box that says Drop a PDF here, or click to browse, and wait for the page thumbnails to appear.
2. 2
   Click each page you want to delete so that it shows a check mark. Click it again to untick. Press Select all and untick the keepers instead if that is quicker, and use Clear selection to start the ticking over.
3. 3
   Press the Remove button, which reads Remove N selected with N the number of ticked pages. Those pages leave the board straight away. Undo brings them back if you ticked the wrong ones.
4. 4
   Press the button at the foot of the board, which reads Save N page PDF with N the number of pages that are left, and download trimmed.pdf from the list that appears. Do not press Select all at this point: any page that is ticked when you save is dropped as well.

Two ways to finish: Remove first, or save straight away

The Remove button is a convenience, not a requirement. Pressing it takes the ticked pages off the board so you can see what is left, and it clears the ticks. Pressing Save without it works too: the file is written without any page that is still ticked, and the Save button already shows the page count the result will have.

Choose the first route when you want to look over the survivors, or to remove in several rounds. A round of removals can be undone, and you can tick more pages and remove again. Choose the second when you are certain and want it done in two clicks.

Two messages guard the process. If nothing is ticked and nothing has yet been removed, saving asks you to tick the pages you want to remove first, since otherwise you would save an identical copy. If the ticks cover every page that is left, the tool tells you that at least one page must remain.

Delete the last page or a single page

To remove the last page of a PDF, scroll to the final thumbnail, tick it and remove it. To remove one page from the middle, tick just that thumbnail. A run of pages works the same way: tick them all and they go together in one pass. There is no range to type and no counting involved, because you are looking at the page while you choose it.

The Thumbnail size slider above the board makes the tiles larger when two pages look alike, such as a pair of near-identical forms, and smaller when you want to see a long document in one screen.

Remove blank pages from a PDF

Blank pages are easy to spot in the thumbnail view, so tick each one and remove them in a single pass. The tool does not detect blank pages automatically, which means a page that only looks empty, such as one with a faint watermark, a pale stamp or a few words of small print, is never deleted by mistake.

Scans often have a blank page at the back of every double-sided sheet. Scroll once with a medium thumbnail size, tick each empty tile, and check the count in the bar before you press Remove. If the document has 40 pages and 10 of them are blank, the Remove button will read Remove 10 selected and the Save button will read Save 30 page PDF.

A worked example: trimming an 18-page file

An 18-page application bundle has a cover sheet on page 1, and blank pages at 4, 11 and 12. Tick those four thumbnails and press Remove 4 selected. The board closes up, and the count in the bar reads 14 pages, which is 18 - 4. The survivors renumber like this:

The arithmetic checks out: 2 + 6 + 6 = 14. On the board a moved tile shows both numbers, for instance 3 (was 5), so you can still relate the new position to the old one. Press Save 14 page PDF and download trimmed.pdf. If anyone refers to page 13 of your original, that content is now page 9.

How pages are removed

The thumbnails are drawn by pdf.js, the engine browsers use to display PDFs, and only for the tiles that scroll into view, so a long document opens without freezing the tab. The removal itself is done by pdf-lib. When you save, it creates a new empty document and copies in just the pages you kept, in their order. The pages are carried across rather than redrawn, so text stays selectable and images keep their resolution.

Because the new file is built from the kept pages only, the removed pages are not hidden inside it. They are simply not there, along with content that belonged only to them. That is the difference between deleting a page and covering it up. It is also why removal is the right step before sending a document outside your organisation. Be aware that it works on whole pages: anything sensitive on a page you keep is still on that page, and you need redaction for that.

Reading the result

When saving finishes, a row appears under the board with the file name, the number of pages and the size, followed by a Download link. Check the page count first: it must match the count on the Save button and your own subtraction. For the 18-page example the row reads trimmed.pdf with 14 pages.

The size is the less predictable figure. Removing four blank pages from a scan saves very little, because blank scanned pages can be small, while removing four photograph-heavy pages can take a large share of the file with them. Do not expect the size to fall in proportion to the page count. If a size limit is the reason you are trimming, look at this number before you upload.

Then open the file and look at the seams, the places where pages were removed. Make sure a table that ran across two pages was not split by the removal, and that a page that refers to a page you deleted still makes sense.

Cleaning up a phone or scanner bundle

Bundles made from phone photographs or scanner output pick up junk in predictable ways: a retaken photo that leaves two versions of the same page, a blank back, a page photographed with a thumb over it. If you build bundles with Scan to PDF, the quickest routine is to build the whole set, then remove the spares here, rather than fussing over each photo before it goes in.

Tap or click each unwanted tile, compare the count with your list, remove, save and rename. The tiles respond to the keyboard too: move to a tile and press Enter or the space bar to tick it.

Remove pages, extract pages or split?

Three tools sound alike and do different jobs. Choose the one that matches what you want to end up with.

• Remove pages: you know what to throw away, and everything else stays in one file.
• Extract pages: you know what to keep. Extract Pages builds a new file from the pages you tick.
• Split: you want several files. Split PDF cuts a document into parts at the points you choose.
• Reorder as well: if the pages also need moving or turning, Organize PDF does it all on one board.

When people remove pages from a PDF

• Scanned certificates and forms with blank backs or a duplicated sheet.
• Application packs where the portal wants the declaration and the receipt but not the instruction pages you downloaded with them.
• Reports and contracts where an internal page, such as a cost breakdown, should not go to a client.
• Lecture notes and e-books where you want only the chapters you are studying.
• Merged bundles that picked up a stray cover or a repeated page; if you assemble packs often, Merge PDF and this tool work well together.

Tips for a clean result

• Open the result and check the page count against your arithmetic before sending it anywhere.
• Remove first, number later. If the file needs page numbers, add page numbers to the trimmed copy so the sequence has no gaps.
• Keep the original until the new file has been checked. Your upload is never changed, but the download is a separate file with no undo once it is saved.
• If the trimmed file is still too big for a portal, reduce the file size as a last step. Removing pages shrinks a file in proportion to what those pages held, which is not always much.
• Rename the download. The tool names it trimmed.pdf, which says nothing about the contents.

Mistakes to avoid

The commonest is pressing Select all just before Save, as if to confirm the keepers. Every ticked page is dropped on saving, so the tool would try to remove everything and refuse. Leave the survivors unticked. Another is assuming the removal is permanent once you press Remove: it is not until you save, and Undo can bring pages back until then. After the download, the only way back is your original.

A third is closing the tab before downloading. The board lives in your browser's memory, so nothing exists as a file until you press Save and take the download. Finally, remember that page numbers change. A page printed with the number 13 may now be the ninth page of the file.

Limits and privacy

A PDF can be up to 100 MB and 500 pages, and at least one page has to stay. A password-protected file is refused with a message to use Unlock PDF first, and a damaged one with a message to run Repair PDF. The trimmed copy is rebuilt from the kept pages, so bookmarks and fillable form fields from the original are not carried over, and the stored document title is not kept.

The file you upload is never changed. The trimmed copy is a separate download, and once it is saved there is no undo, so keep the original until you have looked the result over. The pages are drawn and edited inside your own browser tab, and your file is not sent to a Jobsixo server.