Skip to content

How to delete pages from a PDF

In short

Open the PDF in Delete Pages, remove the page you are viewing or type the ones you want gone, such as 2-5, 9, 14, and confirm. Until you save, Restore deleted pages brings them back. The new PDF keeps every other page as it was, and your original file is not changed.

The blank page a scanner added, the cover sheet nobody needs, the three pages of terms that should not go to this client: most documents are right apart from a few pages. Taking them out should leave everything else exactly as it was.

Open Delete PagesRemove pages, with a check before you commit

Step by step

  1. Choose the PDF

    Drop the file onto Delete Pages. The document opens in the editor with the Delete Page(s) panel ready. A password-protected PDF has to be unlocked with Unlock PDF first.

  2. Choose the pages

    Current Page removes the page you are looking at. Scroll to it first. Custom Pages lets you type the ones you want gone: single pages, ranges or both, such as "2-5, 9, 14". The panel spells out which pages that covers.

  3. Confirm the delete

    Press Delete selected pages (or Delete this page), then Confirm Delete. Until you save, Restore deleted pages brings them back if you took the wrong ones.

  4. Save and download

    Review & download builds the new PDF from the pages you kept and shows it to you. Download PDF saves it; your original file is not changed.

Blank pages are not found automatically

There is no automatic blank-page detection. Scroll through, note the empty pages, and type them as one list ("4, 9, 12") to remove them in a single pass. A document must keep at least one page, so the tool will not let you select all of them.

Printed page numbers do not renumber themselves

Once page 3 goes, the old page 4 becomes the third page of the file, but a number printed on the page itself is part of the page and stays "4". If the printed sequence needs to match again, add fresh numbers afterwards with Page Numbers.

Common questions

Does deleting pages make the file smaller?

Usually. The new file is built from the pages you keep, so images used only on the removed pages go with them. How much it shrinks depends on what those pages held.

Can I keep the pages I remove?

Deleting leaves your original file untouched, so it still has every page. If you want the removed pages as a file of their own, extract them with Split PDF.

How do I delete pages on my phone?

The same way: the tool works in a phone's browser without an app. Type the page numbers under Custom Pages rather than scrolling to each page.

Why this happens, and when to do something else

  • Why can't I delete pages from a PDF?Usually because you are viewing the PDF rather than editing it (most readers deliberately have no page tools) or because the file carries a restriction on rearranging pages.
  • How do I delete a page from a PDF on my iPhone or Android phone?Open Delete Pages from PDF in your phone's browser and choose the file. Delete the page you are looking at, or type the pages to remove, confirm, then tap Save. The trimmed copy downloads, with no app or account needed.
  • Why does my PDF have so many nearly-empty pages?Word processors start sections on new pages, refuse to split tables and add page breaks before headings, so a document with little content can still be very long, and the fix is either to change the template or to recombine the sparse pages afterwards.

Other guides

KovaPDF uses a few first-party cookies to keep you signed in, apply fair-use limits and count visits for our own statistics. No advertising, no cross-site tracking. How we use cookies