Extract PDF Pages

Extracting pulls a chosen subset of pages out of a PDF and saves them as a new, smaller PDF. The original file is unchanged, the pages you did not select stay where they were, and you end up with a clean second file containing only the pages you ticked. This is different from deleting (which modifies the original) and different from splitting (which cuts a PDF into multiple equal pieces).

Use it when someone sends you a 60-page report and you only need pages 12 to 18 for a meeting. Tick those 7 pages, click extract, download a 7-page PDF named 'report-extracted.pdf'. Total time: 15 seconds, file size drops from 4 MB to around 600 KB, and you can email or print the short version without making the recipient scroll through 53 pages of content they do not need.

The tool shows a thumbnail grid of every page in the uploaded PDF. Click a thumbnail to select it; click again to deselect. The selection counter at the bottom updates as you tick (for example '7 pages will be extracted into a new PDF'). A 'Select All' / 'Deselect All' button toggles the whole document if you want to invert your selection. Selections do not need to be contiguous: you can pick pages 1, 5, 12, 13 and 47 from the same document and they will appear in that order in the new file.

Worked example: a 30-page conference programme. You only care about the talks on day 2, which are pages 8 to 17, plus the venue map on page 30. Tick pages 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, then tick page 30. The output is an 11-page PDF with the talks first, then the venue map at the end - sorted in document order automatically, regardless of which order you ticked them.

Extract when you need a few pages from one big document. Split when you want to chop a single PDF into evenly-sized chunks (a 50-page document into 5 ten-page files). Delete when you want to remove a few pages and keep the rest of the original (extracting is the inverse: you keep what you select, delete throws away what you select). Merge when you have multiple separate PDFs you want to combine into one.

Common mistake: people use [delete PDF pages](/delete-pdf-pages) when they actually want extract. If you want to keep 5 pages out of 100, do not delete 95 pages one by one - just extract the 5 you want. The other tools sit alongside this one in the [PDF tools](/categories/pdf) category for the times when extract is the wrong fit.

All processing happens in your browser using pdf-lib, which means the file never leaves your device. There is no server upload, no cloud copy, no third-party API in the chain. For documents up to about 200 pages and 50 MB the tool is instant; for very large PDFs (500+ pages, 100+ MB scientific reports or e-books) the thumbnail grid takes 5 to 15 seconds to render, then extraction itself runs in a couple of seconds.

The output PDF retains the original page sizes, fonts and embedded images of the pages you selected, so a 7-page extract from a graphics-heavy 60-page brochure will still be a few hundred KB rather than tiny. To shrink the result further, run it through [compress PDF](/compress-pdf) afterwards. Pages with form fields will keep the form fields in the extracted version; signed PDFs may show a 'signature invalid' warning in the extracted file because the cryptographic signature was applied to the original document, not your subset.