Rotate PDF pages and save

What Rotate PDF does, and when you need it

Rotate PDF turns the pages of a PDF by a quarter, a half or three quarters of a turn, and saves them that way. Turn one page, a few or all of them, in one PDF or several at once. The new PDF opens the right way up everywhere: on phones, in email, on upload portals and on printers. It all happens inside your browser, with nothing uploaded, no sign-up and no watermark.

A sideways page makes the reader tilt their head or their screen, and it can make a careful application look careless. People turn pages for:

• Scanned documents. A page that went into the scanner the wrong way comes out sideways or upside down.
• Applications and forms. Certificates, marksheets and ID copies, such as Aadhaar or PAN card scans, for job, college, exam, bank, visa and government portals. Upright pages are quicker for an officer to check.
• Office reports. A wide table or chart often sits on its side in a portrait report.
• Study notes. Photos of notes that went into a PDF the wrong way round.
• Legal papers and invoices. Agreements, affidavits, bills and receipts scanned with a page or two turned.

Turning the view, or saving the turn

Most PDF readers have a rotate button. In many of them, it only turns your view: the page looks right on your screen, but the file hasn't changed. Close it, email it or upload it, and the page is sideways again. Some readers save the turn and some only when you choose Save, so it is easy to be unsure which happened.

Rotate PDF saves the turn into the file. Each page you turn gets a new rotation setting, written into the PDF itself, and PDF readers follow it when they show the page. So the page opens the right way up for you, for the person you send it to, on the portal where you upload it and on the printer.

To check that a turn is saved, open the new PDF in a different app, or on another device. If the pages are upright there, the turn is in the file.

Step by step: turning pages on this page

1. Add your PDF. Press Choose PDF files and pick one or several, drop PDFs anywhere on this page, or paste one you copied. To try it first, press Try with a sample PDF: it makes a 4-page site survey with page 2 sideways and page 3 upside down.
2. Find the pages. Each file gets a heading with its name, page count and size, then a card for each page. A card's picture shows the page the way PDF readers show it now.
3. Turn them. Click or tap a page's picture to turn it a quarter turn right. Or use the arrow buttons in the top-right corner of its card to turn it left or right. A yellow tag on the picture shows the angle.
4. Turn many at once. The arrows on a file's heading turn every page of that file. Turn all left and Turn all right, above the cards, turn every page of every file. Undo all turns puts every page back.
5. Save. Press the yellow button under the cards, which stays in view at the bottom of your screen on a long PDF. It says Save turned PDF, or Save 3 turned PDFs when three files have turned pages. Until you turn a page, it says Turn a page to save.
6. Download. A row appears under the tool with the new file's name, like report-rotated.pdf, the pages turned, the size before and after, the time taken and "nothing uploaded". Press Download.

If you turn another page after saving, the result goes away and the Save button comes back, so the file you download always matches the cards. With a keyboard, press Tab to reach a card's arrows and Enter to press them. Screen readers announce each turn.

Left, right, clockwise and anticlockwise

A right turn is clockwise, the way a clock's hands move: the top of the page goes to the right. A left turn is anticlockwise, or counterclockwise in American English: the top goes to the left. Each press is a quarter turn, 90°. Judging by a page's picture on its card:

Why one left turn shows 270°. The tag counts clockwise from how the page was when you added it, and a quarter turn left ends in the same place as three quarters right. Turn a page four times the same way and it is back where it started: its tag goes away, and it no longer counts as turned.

Your turn adds to the page's own rotation. Some pages already carry a rotation setting, often written by a scanner, and the card's picture already shows it. Rotate PDF adds your turn to that setting, so you never need to know it: just turn the page until its picture looks right.

Why nothing loses quality

A PDF page holds its text, pictures and drawings, plus a few settings. One of those settings says how far to turn the page when it is shown. Rotate PDF changes only that setting, and only on the pages you turned. It doesn't draw the page again, doesn't turn it into a picture and doesn't compress anything again.

• Text stays text, so you can still search it, select it and copy it.
• Pictures and scans keep every pixel, so nothing gets blurry, however many times you turn and save.
• Fonts, colours and drawings stay exactly as they were.

A tool that turns pages by drawing them again as pictures can blur small print and stop the text being searchable. Here, only the direction a page is shown in changes.

What stays the same in your PDF

Every page of your PDF stays, in the same order. The file is kept as it is, and only the rotation setting of each page you turned changes, so everything else comes through exactly as it was:

• Links to other pages and to websites still work.
• Bookmarks, the outline in a reader's side panel, still lead to the right pages.
• Forms keep their fields and anything already filled in.
• Tags, the structure that screen readers use to read a PDF aloud, stay.
• Page labels, custom page numbers like i, ii and iii for an introduction, stay.
• Attachments and the document's details, such as its title and author, stay.
• The size barely changes, because only those settings change. It often comes out a little smaller, because the new file packs its small internal parts more tightly. Real results has measured examples.

A few kinds of files need a word:

• Locked with a password. A PDF that needs a password to open can't be used. Its heading says "Locked with a password. Unlock it first, then add it again."
• Editing restrictions. A PDF that opens without a password but doesn't allow changes is turned anyway, and the new PDF opens without those restrictions. The result says so.
• Digital signatures. A signed PDF can be turned, but the changed copy no longer carries a valid signature, and the result says so. If the signature must stay valid, send the original.

Real results from our tests

We turned these PDFs 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; your device may be faster or slower.

• Under 0.1 sto save the sample PDF with 2 pages turned
• 5.04 MBfor a 5.07 MB textbook with all 117 pages turned
• 0pages drawn again or compressed again
• 0 bytessent to any server

Poppler, a different PDF reader from the one in Chrome, found every page of every result in its place, and only the turned pages had changed direction. We also drew each page with pdfium, the PDF engine inside Chrome, and compared it with the original turned the same way: every page matched. The textbook kept all 35 of its bookmarks and 509 links, and the form kept all 8 filled-in answers.

The largest PDF we turned was a 1,000-page scan of 1.11 GB, on the same computer: turning all its pages took 19.9 seconds. Saving the 400-page scan, the browser used about 1.6 GB more memory than when idle, because the file and the new PDF are both held in memory while it is made.

Scanned pages that came out sideways or upside down

A scanner saves each page the way it went in: put a page in sideways or upside down, and that is how it comes out. Some scanners and scanner apps try to work out which way is up, and can get it wrong on pages with little text, such as photos, stamps or handwriting. Document feeders, the trays that pull a stack of pages through one after another, add habits of their own:

• One page put in the wrong way comes out turned while the rest are fine. Turn just that one.
• Double-sided scans can come out with every back page upside down, depending on how the scanner turns the paper over. Click each of those pages' pictures twice: a 20-page scan has 10 back pages, so 20 clicks.
• Wide pages in the stack, such as a landscape table, come out on their side.

If a whole scan came out sideways, use the arrows on the file's heading instead of turning pages one by one. Then turn back any page that was already upright.

Phone photos that went into a PDF the wrong way round

When you photograph a page, your phone usually notes which way it was held, and most apps use that note to show the photo upright. But the note can be lost on the way, and a phone held flat over a table can easily guess wrong. The photo then goes into the PDF on its side, and the PDF keeps it that way.

If you already have the PDF, turn its pages here: nothing is drawn again, so the photos keep their quality. If you still have the photos and haven't made the PDF yet, JPG to PDF can turn each picture before converting, so the PDF comes out right the first time. Either way, look at every page's card before you save.

A landscape table inside a portrait report

Reports, theses, project files and annual accounts often have a few wide pages: a big table, a chart or a drawing set on its side so that it fits. On paper, readers turn the book. On a screen, they have to turn their head. Turn just those pages, judging by where the top of the table points:

• Top pointing left: turn the page right, once.
• Top pointing right: turn the page left, once.

The other pages stay exactly as they were, and so do the report's bookmarks, links and page numbers. If the report will also be printed, check the print preview, so the wide page fits the paper the way you want.

Before you print, upload or send

Turn the pages first, then do everything else:

1. Turn, then check. Open the new PDF and scroll through every page, to catch a page turned the wrong way.
2. Shrink last. If a portal wants the file under a size, like 100 KB or 200 KB, put the turned PDF through Resize PDF after turning. Turning barely changes the size, but shrinking last means the limit is checked on the very file you upload. For email, our PDF compressor makes a file smaller at a level you choose.
3. Upload the new file. Its name ends in -rotated, like marksheet-rotated.pdf. Rename it if the portal asks for a certain name.
4. Print from the new file. Check the print preview before you print many copies.

Turning several PDFs at once

Add as many PDFs as you like, all at once or a few at a time with Add more PDFs. Each file gets its own heading with a coloured dot, and its pages follow it.

• One page: click its picture, or use the arrows on its card.
• Every page of one file: use the arrows on that file's heading.
• Every page of every file: use Turn all left or Turn all right, above the cards.
• Take a file out: press the X on its heading.

Only the PDFs with at least one turned page are saved, and the button says how many, as in Save 3 turned PDFs. One PDF downloads on its own. Several come in one ZIP file, rotated-pdfs.zip, with a PDF for each, named after its original, like scan-rotated.pdf. If two share a name, the second gets (2) added.

This is handy for the papers of one application, such as an Aadhaar card copy, a PAN card copy and a bank statement, each scanned as its own PDF: turn what needs turning in all of them and save once. To join them into one PDF, use Merge PDF.

Private: your files stay on your device

The papers people turn are often private: ID cards, certificates, bank statements, medical reports, signed agreements. With NoUploadPDF they never leave your phone or computer. Your browser opens the PDF, and pdf.js draws the small pictures of its pages. Then our pages engine, written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly, saves the turned PDF in a background worker on your device, so the page stays responsive while it works.

The page can't send your files to another site, even by mistake. Its Content Security Policy, a rule the website gives your browser, tells the browser to block the page from sending data to any other site. There is no account to create and nothing to sign in to. If you like, you can check in your browser's network panel that nothing is uploaded.

Compared with tools that upload your files

Many online PDF tools upload your files to their servers, turn the pages there and send the result back. Here is how that compares with working on your own device:

Many upload-based tools are well made, and some promise to delete your files after a while. A file that is never uploaded needs no such promise.

Use it on Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac

There is nothing to install: Rotate PDF runs in an up-to-date browser on phones, tablets and computers. On a touch screen, each card always shows its arrows; with a mouse, they appear when you point at a card.

• Android

  Open this page in Chrome or another up-to-date browser and tap Choose PDF files. Pick a PDF, then tap a page's picture to turn it. The new PDF is saved to your Downloads folder.

• iPhone and iPad

  Use Safari. Tap Choose PDF files and pick a PDF from the Files app. Tap a page's picture to turn it, then save. 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 and drop them anywhere on the page. Click a page's picture or use its arrows. The new PDF goes to your Downloads folder.

On a phone, the cards sit two or three to a row, so when every page needs the same turn, the arrows on the file's heading save a lot of scrolling. A ZIP of several PDFs opens in the file manager on your phone or computer.

Problems and quick fixes

• The button says "Turn a page to save". No page is turned yet, or every turned page is back where it started, after four turns the same way or Undo all turns. Turn at least one page.
• A file says "Locked with a password". It needs a password to open, so it can't be used here. Bank statements sent by email often come locked like this. Unlock it first, then add the unlocked copy.
• A file says it can't be read as a PDF. It may be damaged or only partly downloaded. Download it again from where you got it, then add the new copy.
• A card shows "No preview". Its picture couldn't be drawn, but you can still turn the page. The yellow tag shows its angle, and the saved PDF is turned the same way.
• Pictures appear slowly on a long PDF. Each card's picture is drawn as it comes near the screen, so a book of hundreds of pages isn't drawn all at once. Scroll to the pages you need.
• The new PDF still looks sideways. Check that you opened the new file, whose name ends in -rotated, not the original. If your reader turned its own view earlier, turn the view back.
• "These files are too big to handle in this browser's memory." Save fewer files at a time, or use a computer, which usually has more memory than a phone.

Limits

• Quarter turns only. Pages turn by 90°, 180° or 270°. Rotate PDF can't straighten a scan that is tilted by a few degrees, because the tilt is inside the scanned picture. Scan the page again, laid straight, or use a scanner app that straightens pages.
• Whole pages only. A page turns with everything on it. One picture or one table within a page can't be turned on its own.
• No other changes. Pages aren't moved, deleted or added here. Organize PDF does those and can turn pages too, and Split PDF takes out only the pages you need.
• Locked and signed files. A PDF that needs a password to open can't be used until you unlock it, and a digital signature isn't valid on the changed copy, even when only one page is turned.
• Memory. We set no size or page limit, but the file has to fit in your device's memory. Phones have less than computers, so very big files are easier on a computer.
• No text recognition. Turning a scan upright doesn't make its words searchable. A scan made only of pictures stays that way.

Rotation terms, explained

Clockwise

The way a clock's hands move. A clockwise turn, a right turn on this page, moves the top of the page to the right.

Anticlockwise

The other way, also called counterclockwise. A left turn on this page moves the top of the page to the left.

Portrait and landscape

A portrait page stands upright, taller than it is wide. A landscape page lies on its side, wider than it is tall.

Rotation setting

The setting in each PDF page, called /Rotate, that tells readers how far to turn the page when they show it. Rotate PDF changes only this.

Page labels

Custom page numbers stored in a PDF, like i, ii and iii for an introduction, which readers show instead of plain numbers.

Digital signature

A coded seal that shows who signed a PDF and that it hasn't changed since. A changed copy no longer carries a valid one.