PDF Tools

"PDF tools" covers several different jobs. Picking the right one depends on whether you want to change which pages are in a file, or get something out of a PDF without changing the file itself.

• Combining several PDFs into one file? Use Merge PDF.
• Cutting one PDF into several smaller files at once? Use Split PDF.
• Keeping only a handful of pages as one new PDF? Use Extract PDF Pages. Split and Extract can look similar — Split turns a whole document into several files at once, while Extract builds a single new file from pages you pick by hand.
• Pages scanned sideways or upside down? Use Rotate PDF. It changes how pages are displayed and printed, not their content.
• Sharing a document and want the author, company or software name gone? Use PDF Metadata Remover.

Extract PDF Pages copies whole pages — the layout, text and images together — into a new PDF. If you don't need a PDF at all, and just want what's stored inside one, two more specific tools apply:

• Need the words, to copy, search or reuse? Use PDF Text Extractor. It reads text that is already stored in the PDF — it is not OCR, so a PDF made only of scanned page images has no text for it to find.
• Need the photos or figures embedded in the PDF? Use PDF Image Extractor. It pulls out embedded image resources, not a picture of the whole page — a page made only of text or vector drawings has nothing for it to extract.

Because these tools run in your browser, a PDF does not need to be uploaded to a conversion server to be merged, split, rotated or read. That also sets the limits: none of these tools can open a password-protected PDF — they can tell you a file is encrypted, but they cannot remove or guess a password. Metadata removal only clears the document's standard info fields (title, author, dates and similar); it does not touch attachments, annotations, or hidden data embedded inside the page content itself.

For worked examples, including tasks that need two of these tools one after the other, see Which PDF Tool Do I Need?.