How to Extract Pages from a PDF Online for Free
Someone sends you a 90-page report but you only need pages 12 through 18 for your presentation. Or you have a textbook PDF and want to pull out a single chapter to read on your tablet without scrolling past 400 pages of material you do not need right now. Or your university submission portal has a 5 MB limit and the full document is 30 MB — you need to submit just the relevant section.
Extracting pages from a PDF creates a brand new file containing only the pages you selected. The original document stays completely untouched — no pages are removed from it. You do not need Adobe Acrobat, you do not need to install any software, and you do not need to create an account anywhere. The whole thing works in your browser.
How page extraction actually works
A PDF is not a single continuous stream of content like a Word document. Under the hood (per ISO 32000-2, the PDF specification), each page is a separate object with its own content stream, fonts, and embedded images. The page objects sit in a page tree, and each one can be independently addressed. Extracting pages means copying those specific page objects into a new PDF file while building a new page tree that only references the pages you selected.
The content of each extracted page — text, images, form fields, annotations, hyperlinks — comes along exactly as it was in the original. This is fundamentally different from screenshotting pages or using "Print to PDF," both of which rasterise the content and lose things like selectable text, clickable hyperlinks, and fillable form fields. Extraction preserves everything because it copies the actual PDF objects rather than re-rendering the visual output.
Step by step: extract pages online
Open the iFormat PDF Splitter. Upload your PDF — you will see thumbnail previews of every page laid out in a grid. Click the pages you want to extract and they highlight when selected. For non-consecutive pages, click each one individually. For a continuous range, type it in the range input using the format 5-12, 15, 20-25 — this selects pages 5 through 12, page 15, and pages 20 through 25. Hit Extract and download the new PDF containing only your selected pages.
The extracted file keeps the original formatting, fonts, images, and resolution exactly as they appeared in the source document. Bookmarks that point to extracted pages carry over to the new file; bookmarks pointing to pages you did not extract are dropped since their targets no longer exist. Page numbering in the new file starts from 1 regardless of what the original page numbers were.
Extract vs Split — they are different operations
Extract pulls specific pages into one new file — you choose exactly which pages and they all end up in a single PDF. Split divides a PDF into multiple separate files, either every page as its own PDF or splitting at specific break points you define. If you want one file with just your chosen pages, extract is what you need. If you want to break a document into chapters where each chapter becomes its own file, split is the operation you are looking for.
Common scenarios where extraction saves real time
University coursework. Your professor uploads the entire 300-page course reader as one PDF at the start of the semester. Each week you extract the 15-20 pages of assigned reading and load just those onto your e-reader or tablet. Way more practical than scrolling through a massive document trying to find where this week's reading starts.
Contracts and legal filings. A signed contract runs to 45 pages, but the counterparty's lawyer only needs the signature pages for their records. Extract pages 43 and 44, send those over, keep the full document in your own files. If you need to add your signature to the extracted pages before sending, you can do that as a second step.
Government forms. Many government PDFs bundle several pages of instructions with the actual form at the end. Extract just the form pages so you have a clean document to work with. If the form has fillable fields, they survive extraction — you can fill out the form digitally after extracting.
Portfolio assembly. Pull your best work from different project PDFs and merge the extracted pages into a single portfolio document. Extract first from each source, then merge the extracted pages into one file in the order you want.
Extract pages on mobile
The online tool works on iPhone and Android in Safari, Chrome, or any modern mobile browser. Tap the upload area to select a PDF from Files (iOS) or your file manager / Downloads folder (Android). The thumbnail grid is scrollable and fully touch-responsive — tap any page to select it, tap again to deselect. Once you have picked your pages, tap Extract and the new PDF saves to your device's Downloads folder automatically.
If you are working from email — someone sent you a large PDF attachment and you need to forward just a few pages — open the attachment, save it to Files or Downloads, then upload it to the extractor. This is significantly faster than finding, installing, and learning a dedicated PDF app from the App Store or Play Store, most of which require subscriptions for basic page extraction.
Keeping file size under control after extraction
Extracting pages usually produces a smaller file than the original, but the reduction is not always proportional. A PDF that is 10 MB for 100 pages might still be 5 MB when you extract just 10 pages, because those 10 pages might contain high-resolution photographs or detailed charts that account for most of the file's weight. Fonts embedded in the original also copy over in full even if the extracted pages only use a handful of characters from them.
If the extracted file is still too large for your needs — email attachment limits, upload portal restrictions — run it through a PDF compressor after extraction. You can usually cut the size by 50-70% without noticeable quality loss. For specific target sizes, see how to compress a PDF to under 500 KB or how to get it under 1 MB for upload portals.
Extracting pages on Mac, Windows, and Chrome OS
On Mac, Preview offers a basic extract-by-drag approach: open the PDF, show thumbnails in the sidebar, select the pages you want by Command-clicking them, then drag the selection to the desktop. macOS creates a new PDF containing just those pages. The downside is that Preview sometimes re-renders fonts during this process, which can cause subtle differences when the recipient is on a different operating system.
On Windows, there is no built-in page extraction tool. Microsoft Edge can print specific pages to PDF via Print > Save as PDF and typing a page range, but this re-renders the content rather than copying the original page objects. The result loses selectable text quality and any interactive form fields. For a clean extraction that preserves everything, the online tool is the most reliable option across all platforms including Chromebooks, which have no PDF editing capability at all beyond what the browser offers.
Frequently asked questions
Does extracting pages remove them from the original?
No. The original PDF is never modified in any way. Extraction creates a completely new file with copies of the selected pages. Your original document remains exactly as it was, with all pages intact.
Can I extract pages from a scanned PDF?
Yes. Scanned pages are raster images inside a PDF container. They extract the same way as text-based pages — the image data for each selected page copies into the new file at its original resolution.
Do hyperlinks survive extraction?
Links within extracted pages are preserved — if page 5 has a link to a URL, that link still works in the extracted file. Internal links that point to pages you did not extract become non-functional because their target page no longer exists in the new document.
Can I reorder the extracted pages?
The extractor preserves the original page order. If you need pages in a different sequence, extract them first, then use the page manager to rearrange. Or extract pages in separate batches and merge them in the order you want.
Is there a size or page limit?
The free tier handles files up to 50 MB and PDFs up to 200 pages. Pro raises the file size limit to 200 MB with no page count restriction.
