Buzz
Sometimes, you may not need to retain all the information from a massive report, or the file size is too large to fit on a USB drive, or only a few pages are worth keeping. In such cases, you can extract those specific pages from the original document and create a new, lighter file.
Steps
Acrobat Professional on PC or Mac
Launch Adobe Acrobat Professional. Open the document containing the pages you want to extract.
Click on the Pages tab located on the left side of the document window. The Pages panel will appear, displaying thumbnail images of the document's pages.
Arrange the pages. In the Pages panel, drag and drop the thumbnails of the pages you wish to extract to arrange them in the desired order.
- For example, if you want to extract the first and third pages, drag the thumbnail of the third page until a blue bar appears above the thumbnail of the second page. This blue bar indicates the new position of the third page when you release the thumbnail.
- Drop the thumbnail so that the pages appear in sequence. The page you dragged will now be the second page of the document.
In the Document menu, select the Pages icon, then choose Extract. Alternatively, you can right-click on any selected page and follow the same steps.
- The Extract Pages dialog box will appear.
Set the page range. If the page range displayed in the dialog box is incorrect, re-enter the pages you want to extract in the dialog box.
Adjust the settings. To delete the extracted pages from the original document after extraction, select the "Delete Pages After Extracting" option.
- Choose "Extract Pages As Separate Files" to create a new file for each page you extract. Do not select this option if you want to combine the pages into a single file.
Click OK. Acrobat will extract the pages into a new PDF document.
Save and close the new document. You can rename the file and choose a save location, then return to the original document. Select Save to automatically save it as a PDF, or choose Save As... to explore other formats, including PNG, JPEG, Word documents, and many more.
Clean up the original document. If you chose not to delete the extracted pages from the original file and want to restore the original page order, click Revert in the File menu. Otherwise, save your edited file as usual.
Using Google Chrome
Open the Google Chrome browser.
Press Ctrl-O to open the dialog box and locate the file from which you want to extract pages.
Search for or enter the file name and click "Open."
In the file, click on the menu icon at the top-right corner, which resembles three horizontal black lines.
Select "Print."
Click the "Change" button next to "Destination."
Select "Save as PDF."
Click the "All" button and enter the page numbers you need.
Click "Save."
You will be prompted (via a dialog box) to enter the file name, choose a save location, and then click "Save" to complete the process.
Preview on Macintosh
Launch Preview. Open the document containing the pages you want to extract, then click the Thumbnail button at the top of the window. A sidebar will appear, displaying all the pages in the document.
Arrange the pages. If you want to extract non-consecutive pages into a separate file, drag those pages close together in the order you want them to appear in the new document. You can also hold the Shift key and click to select all the pages you need to extract.
In the File menu, select Print. In the Print dialog box, enter the page range you want to extract, or choose "Select Pages" from the sidebar.
Print to PDF. At the bottom-left corner of the Print dialog box, click the PDF button, then select Save as PDF...
Name the file. Choose the save location, enter a name, and save the file. You're done!
Online Tool SmallPDF (for all platforms)
Visit Smallpdf.com using your preferred browser and go to the address http://merge.smallpdf.com.
Select the document with the pages you want to extract. Drag and drop the PDF file (or multiple PDF files) into the designated drop area on the webpage.
Edit the file and rearrange the order. Switch to "Page mode" (2.) on the website. You can then view individual pages. At the bottom of each page, you'll see the document number (hover over the number to see the title) and on the left is the page number. You can reorder the pages or select the ones you want to extract and delete the rest by clicking the X icon in the corner of each thumbnail.
Combine PDF. Once you're done and the file has been uploaded, you can create the final PDF by clicking the button below the preview section. A new PDF will be generated and automatically downloaded, which you can find in your browser's download folder.
CutePDF Writer
Visit the CutePDF website. Select CutePDF Writer. You will be redirected to the download page. CutePDF Writer is a free software.
Download the necessary files. You will need to download the CutePDF installer and the GPL Ghostscript converter. Both are linked on the website.
Install both files. Install the converter first, followed by CutePDF. The software will be installed as a printer that you can select from the Print menu of any program.
Open the file containing the pages you want to extract. You can open the file using any PDF reader. Then, open the Print menu and select the pages you want to extract instead of the entire document. You can use the Range section to select multiple pages.
Select CutePDF from the list of available printers. In any Print menu, you will see a list of connected printers. Choose CutePDF and then click Print.
Choose the save location for the file. A few seconds after clicking Print, a window will appear prompting you to select a location and name the file. CutePDF won't print anything; instead, it will create a new PDF file from the selected pages.
PDFsam
Download PDFsam from the PDFsam website. Visit the official site and download the version of PDFsam compatible with your system.
Install PDFsam. The installer is available for both Windows and Mac, while the Zip file can run on any system with Java installed.
Select the merge/extract PDF module. Open PDFsam and choose the merge/extract PDF module.
Open the PDF file containing the pages you want to extract. Click Add, then select the PDF file with the pages you need to extract and open it with PDFsam.
Choose the pages you want to extract. Double-click the "Page Selection" column to edit and enter the page numbers or ranges you want to extract. Separate numbers and ranges with commas.
Set up the output document. Name the file and specify the save location.
Click Run. A ding sound will indicate that your PDF file has been successfully split.
Tips
- If the document is secured and does not allow page extraction, you won't be able to use the methods above. Your only option is to print the document.
Warnings
- Acrobat applications (both Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Pro) do not allow printing of PDF documents.
Acrobat Pro only supports extraction, while Acrobat Reader does not support either extraction or printing.
