Organize PDF pages your way

What Organize PDF does, and when you need it

Organize PDF shows every page of your PDF as a card, in the order the pages will be saved. Drag the cards into a new order, delete pages you don't need, copy a page you need twice or turn one that is sideways, then save a new PDF. You can also bring in pages from other PDFs. It all happens inside your browser, with nothing uploaded, no sign-up and no watermark.

People reach for it when a PDF is nearly right, but not quite:

• Scanned documents saved out of order, upside down, or with empty pages in between.
• Job, college and exam applications, where a portal wants marksheets, certificates and ID proof in a set order, as one file.
• Bank, visa and government forms, where the filled form goes first, then your Aadhaar or PAN card copy, and a page you signed on paper has to go back in its place.
• Office reports, with the summary first, the appendix last and the draft page left out.
• Study notes from different weeks, put in the order of the syllabus.
• Legal papers and invoices, like annexures after an agreement's signature page, or invoices in date order.

Step by step: organizing a PDF on this page

1. Choose your PDF. Press Choose PDF files, drop PDFs anywhere on the page, or paste them. You can choose several at once, and each page gets a card.
2. Find your pages. The number on the dark handle in a card's top-left corner is the page's place in the new PDF. The label under the picture, like "Page 7", is its page number in its own file, so you can tell pages apart even after moving them.
3. Arrange them. Drag the cards into order, and use the buttons on a card to turn, copy or delete it. Add pages from more PDFs puts another file's pages at the end.
4. Save. Press Save PDF with N pages. When it is done, you see the new file's name, its size, how long it took and "nothing uploaded". Press Download.

The new PDF is named after the file its first page comes from, with "-organized" added: report.pdf gives report-organized.pdf. Your original file isn't changed.

If you change anything after saving, the result goes away and the Save button comes back, so the PDF you download always matches the cards. Download first if you want to keep that version.

The page cards and their buttons

On a computer, the buttons show when you point at a card. On phones and tablets they are always shown. With pages from several files, each file has its own colour, shown by the dot and a bar along the top of its cards.

Dragging, undo and the keyboard

• With a mouse, drag a card from anywhere except its buttons. The other cards move aside.
• With a finger, drag it by the numbered handle. Touching the rest of the card scrolls the page as usual.
• With a keyboard, press Tab until the card's handle is selected, then use the keys below. Screen readers announce each move.

Every change can be undone, one step at a time, up to 200 steps: moving, turning, copying or deleting a page, and even adding a file. Added the wrong PDF? Press Undo and all its pages go. After you undo, a new change clears the steps you could redo.

Putting a scanned document back in order

Scans often come out muddled: a stack fed the wrong way round, a page that went through twice, or a two-sided paper scanned one side at a time, with all the fronts first and all the backs after them.

1. Go by the pictures. In a scan, the "Page N" labels only show the order the scanner saved. Look at the numbers printed on the paper.
2. Work from the front. Drag the page that should come first to place 1, the next to place 2, and so on. Pages already placed stay put.
3. For a two-sided scan, drag the first back to place 2, after its front, the next back to place 4, and so on. If you turned the stack over to scan the backs, they often come last one first.
4. Turn upside-down pages with two presses of the turn button, and delete pages that went through twice.
5. Check and save. The handle numbers should now match the numbers printed on the pages.

Removing blank, duplicate or draft pages

The delete button takes a page out of the new PDF. Pages people often remove:

• Blank pages, like the empty backs of one-sided papers scanned in two-sided mode.
• Duplicates, such as a page scanned twice, or the same certificate in two files.
• Drafts, like a page with review comments or an old cover.
• Pages nobody asked for, such as the instructions at the start of a downloaded form.

After a delete, the keyboard moves to the next card's delete button, so you can press Enter again to remove the next page too. Links and bookmarks that point at a deleted page are removed. Its pictures and fonts are left out too, unless another page uses them, so the file can get smaller. To keep only a few pages of a long PDF, Split PDF is quicker: you type the pages you want, like 1-3, 5.

Moving an appendix, annexure or chapter

Each card moves on its own, so a block of pages moves card by card. These tips make it quicker:

• Drag to the edge to scroll. Hold a dragged card near the top or bottom of the window and the page scrolls along.
• Use Home and End. On a card's handle, Home sends it to the start and End to the end.
• Move the block in its own order. To put Annexures A, B and C at the end, send A to the end first, then B, then C.
• Zoom out on a computer (Ctrl and minus, or Cmd and minus) to see more cards at once.

For a long block, like a 40-page appendix that should come first in a 300-page report, it can be quicker to cut the PDF into parts with Split PDF (By range: 1-260, 261-300) and join them in the new order with Merge PDF.

Pages from several PDFs: a signed page in its place

Say you printed page 8 of an agreement, signed it and scanned it. Choose the agreement, press Add pages from more PDFs and choose the scan. Its page appears at the end, in a colour of its own. Drag it next to the unsigned page 8, delete the unsigned one, and save. The same works for a cover letter before a form, or an ID card copy after an application.

When the pages come from more than one file:

• The new PDF is named after the file of its first page, and takes its title, author and other details, attachments and scripts from that file.
• Each file's own bookmarks are kept, one file's after another's, except those pointing at deleted pages.
• The form fields of all the files are kept. If an earlier file already uses a field's name, the field is renamed (Name becomes Name_2), so each keeps its own value.
• Layers are kept. Tags, page labels and XFA forms (an older kind of form) are left out.

Copying a page, and turning a landscape page

Copying. The copy button puts a copy of the page right after it, ready to drag elsewhere. Use it when a page belongs in two places, like a summary that opens and closes a report. The copy gets its own copies of the page's links and form-field boxes. A field shows the same value on both pages, because it is still one field: fill in your name once and it appears on both.

Turning. A wide table or chart is often printed sideways in an upright document. Each press of the turn button turns that one page a quarter turn to the right, and the card shows how far, like 90°. Three presses turn it left, and a fourth puts it back. Turning doesn't redraw the page, so its text stays sharp. To turn every page at once, or left in one press, use Rotate PDF.

Why your pages keep their full quality

A PDF tool could save your pages by drawing each one again as a picture, or by squeezing its pictures. Text would turn into pixels you can't search, and scans would get soft. Organize PDF does neither: each page is copied as it is, with its text, fonts, pictures and drawings untouched.

Text stays text, so you can still search, select and copy it, and scans keep every detail however often you reorganize. Each page also keeps its own size, crop and turn, plus any turn you add.

Real results from our tests

We organized these files in Chromium 141, the open-source browser Google Chrome is built on, on a Linux computer with 4 processor cores and 16 GB of memory. Times are what the page reported, from pressing Save to the finished file. Your device may be faster or slower.

• 0.6 sto save a 117-page textbook in a new order
• 0.9 suntil the first pages of a 117-page textbook show
• 200steps you can undo, one by one
• 0pages redrawn: each is copied as it is

Deleting 10 of the scan's 42 pages made the file 11.4 MB smaller, about a quarter, because the scanned pictures of the deleted pages were left out. Copying a page added almost nothing: with the copy, the paper was 927 KB, the same as when saved with no changes, because the copy uses the same text, fonts and pictures as its original. Saving the 455 MB scan took the browser about 2.1 GB more memory than when idle, because the file and the new PDF are both held in memory while it is made.

We also drew every page of every result made from our own files with pdfium, the PDF engine inside Chrome, and compared it with its original: every page matched. Poppler, another PDF reader, found the same words on every page of the reordered paper and textbook as on the original pages, so their text can still be searched and copied. The filled-in form kept all 8 of its answers.

What happens to bookmarks, links, forms and more

Organize PDF builds a new document from your pages. Here is what comes along:

When a bookmark is removed, its own sub-bookmarks move up to take its place. Bookmarks that point nowhere in particular, like a heading or a web link, stay, unless they were only headings for bookmarks that are all gone. Named destinations, the places inside a PDF that links jump to, follow the same rule as links.

Locked, protected and signed PDFs

• A password to open. A PDF that needs a password before it opens can't be used. Its card says "Locked with a password. Unlock it first, then add it again." Bank statements and downloaded ID documents often come locked like this. Remove the password first, then add the unlocked copy, and remove the locked card with its X button.
• Editing restrictions. A PDF that opens without a password but doesn't allow changes can be used. The new PDF opens without those restrictions, and the result says so.
• Digital signatures. A digital signature shows a file hasn't changed since it was signed. A reorganized copy has changed, so it no longer carries a valid signature, and the result tells you. If the signature matters, send the signed file as it is.
• Damaged files show "This file can't be read as a PDF. It may be damaged." Try downloading the file again.

Organize, Split, Merge or Rotate: which to use

All four copy pages without redrawing them, on your device. They differ in how you work:

They work well together. For a job application, turn photos of your certificates into a PDF with JPG to PDF, add it here with your marksheet PDF, put the pages in the order the portal lists, then fit the file to the upload limit with Resize PDF.

Private: your pages never leave your device

The PDFs people organize are often private: bank statements, Aadhaar and PAN copies, salary slips, contracts and medical reports. With NoUploadPDF they stay on your phone or computer. In your browser, pdf.js draws the small pictures of the pages, and the pages engine, written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly, builds the new PDF in a background worker, so the page stays responsive.

The page's Content Security Policy, a security rule, tells your browser to block it from sending data to any other website, so it couldn't upload your file even by mistake. To check, open your browser's developer tools (F12 in Chrome or Edge), choose the Network tab and save a PDF: the page loads its own files, and your PDF goes nowhere. There is no account. Our privacy policy has the details.

Compared with tools that upload your files

Many online PDF tools upload your files to their servers to do the work. Here is how that compares:

Some upload-based tools promise to delete your files after a while. A file that is never uploaded needs no such promise.

Organize PDFs on Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac

There is nothing to install: Organize PDF runs in an up-to-date browser on phones, tablets and computers.

• Android

  Open this page in Chrome, tap Choose PDF files and pick your PDF, often from Downloads. Drag cards by their handles. The new PDF goes to your Downloads folder.

• iPhone and iPad

  Open this page in Safari, tap Choose PDF files and pick from the Files app. The new PDF usually goes to Downloads in the Files app.

• Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook

  Click Choose PDF files, or drag PDFs from a folder onto the page. The new PDF goes to your Downloads folder.

Phones handle long documents too, but for hundreds of pages a computer is more comfortable: it shows more cards at once and usually has more memory.

Problems and quick fixes

• A card says "No preview". That page's small picture couldn't be drawn. The card keeps its place and the page goes into the new PDF; check it in the saved file.
• Pictures appear slowly in a long document. Each picture is drawn as its card comes near the screen, so the first pages show soon and the rest as you scroll.
• Dragging doesn't work on my phone. Drag by the dark numbered handle. Anywhere else, a finger scrolls the page.
• I can't see the buttons on a card. On a computer, point at the card, or press Tab to reach them.
• The Download button went away. Something changed after saving. Press Save again, and download before changing anything else.
• "These files are too big to handle in this browser's memory." Close other tabs, use fewer or smaller files at a time, or use a computer.

Limits

• One card at a time. You can't pick several cards and move them together. For long blocks, Split and Merge can be quicker.
• One PDF out. To save pages as separate files, use Split PDF.
• Passwords and signatures. PDFs that need a password to open can't be used, and digital signatures don't stay valid.
• Memory. We set no limit on pages or file size; your device's memory is the only one.
• No editing of what is on a page. It doesn't crop pages, change text or add page numbers.

PDF page terms, explained

Bookmark

A clickable heading in a PDF reader's side panel that jumps to a page, like a table of contents. Also called the outline.

Page label

A custom page number a PDF shows instead of 1, 2, 3, like i, ii, iii for a book's first pages.

Tags

A hidden map of headings, paragraphs and tables that screen readers use to read a PDF aloud in order.

Form field

A box in a PDF you can fill in, tick or choose from.

Digital signature

A coded seal showing who signed a PDF and that it hasn't changed since. A scanned picture of a handwritten signature is different: it is part of the page, and stays.

Annexure or appendix

Extra pages at the end of a main document, like supporting papers to an agreement.