How can you delete pages from a PDF file if you don’t have Adobe Acrobat?
Download PDFCreator from SourceForge. It installs as a printer. It lets you create PDFs from any application by selecting PDFCreator as your “printer.” To delete pages from an existing PDF, open the PDF in Adobe Reader and print to PDFCreator the pages you don’t want to delete.
I don’t have a lot of experience with PDFCreator; I just downloaded it today. But it looks good and it worked well for what I was trying to do.
Update: I tried pdftk, recommended in the comments, and it works well. It’s a command line program with more features than PDFCreator.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
gappy 11.06.09 at 20:29
John,
should you need to go beyond the task you mentioned, may I recommend pdftk (http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk). It merges, splits, rotates, repairs etc. I used it. Recommended.
John 11.06.09 at 20:56
Thanks, Gappy, that’s good to know. Pdftk is the kind of thing I was looking for but I ran across PDFCreator first.
Khairul 11.06.09 at 22:27
You might also want to have a look at PDFill PDF Tools. Works well for me.
Barry Leiba 11.07.09 at 15:57
And just for completeness, Mac OSX comes built in with “Save as PDF” on the print dialogue, and with the ability to delete pages and re-save a PDF in the Preview app.
Neil 11.11.09 at 19:34
I’ve used PDFCreator for some time now (it’s basically a wrapper around GhostScript and RedMon, which you used to have to install manually.) It works great.
I recently came across the PDFTK, for a similar task. I can recommend it, as well.
Linux has the print to PDF/PS (PDF being a cut-down postscript) options, as well; plus OpenOffice prints to PDF natively.
Rick 03.15.11 at 20:31
Thank you for this tip. I knew there had to be a way aside from buying Acrobat Pro!
Jeff 07.06.11 at 16:40
THANK YOU for this article and the link to pdftk. Without this article I would have spent hours trying to figure it out..
Glenn 07.08.11 at 21:02
THANK YOU all for your comments and advise, you have saved me a lot of time and trials.
Matt 09.09.11 at 09:45
Excellent solution! I used this idea in CutePDF as well, and it worked a treat.
Megan 10.11.11 at 16:11
Was trying to figure out how to delete pages, and found the best answer right here, THANKS!!
Hally 10.19.11 at 23:36
i DON’T KNOW that even pdf creator is able to delate pdf pages! Awesome tip!
gwern 12.20.11 at 10:51
pdftk specifics; to delete the first page:
pdftk original.pdf cat 2-end out new.pdf
(Still a little boggled at syntax like “cat 2-end out”.)
cancerofstomach 12.27.11 at 22:59
I noticed the loss of word search functionality when using pdfcreator (didn’t try pdftk though)
louis vuitton 12.31.11 at 18:06
I’m really loving the theme/design of your web web site. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility difficulties? A number of my weblog readers have complained about my website not operating correctly in Explorer but looks fantastic in Opera. Do you might have any solutions to assist fix this problem?
John 12.31.11 at 18:24
Thanks. I’m not aware of any compatibility difficulties.
Russ 01.16.12 at 17:23
Although, not as conveient to use, you can also you the printing capabilities from the OS (I know this works under Linux and OS X). Just print the pages you want to PDF from the initial PDF file.
Chris Beeley 02.06.12 at 04:13
I’m super late to this party, but I just got to this page from Google and I thought I would chime in with the “print to pdf” functionality of NitroPdf (can even print to pdf from inside NitroPdf).
I use it as default because of the excellent integration with Evernote but this is another reason to use it.
win hageman 02.10.12 at 15:54
Sure helped me get some vip mail out. thanks!!!!