Whether you need to extract a few pages from a long report, break a document into email-friendly chunks, or separate chapters from a textbook — splitting a PDF is straightforward with the right tool.
Three Ways to Split a PDF
Different situations call for different splitting methods:
- By page range — "Give me pages 1-5 as one file and pages 6-20 as another." The most common use case.
- By file size — "Break this 80 MB scan into chunks under 10 MB so I can email them." Useful for attachments.
- By bookmarks — "Split this textbook into one PDF per chapter." Requires the PDF to have bookmarks defined.
Method 1: Split by Page Range (Most Common)
- Open PrivaTools Split PDF.
- Upload your PDF (up to 100 MB).
- Choose your split mode:
- Fixed interval — Split every N pages (e.g., every 5 pages creates separate PDFs).
- Custom ranges — Specify exact page numbers (e.g., "1-3, 7-10, 15-20").
- Extract every page — One PDF per page.
- Click Split. The resulting files are packaged in a ZIP for download.
Method 2: Split by File Size
When email size limits are the problem rather than page counts:
- Open PrivaTools Split by Size.
- Upload the PDF.
- Set the maximum file size per chunk (e.g., 10 MB).
- The tool splits at page boundaries, keeping each part under your target size.
This is particularly useful for large scanned documents that need to be emailed or uploaded to portals with size restrictions.
Method 3: Split by Bookmarks / Chapters
For structured documents like textbooks, manuals, or reports with a table of contents:
- Open PrivaTools Split by Bookmarks.
- Upload the PDF. The tool detects bookmark entries automatically.
- Choose the bookmark level to split at (top-level bookmarks = chapters, second-level = sections).
- Each section becomes its own PDF file.
Extract Just a Few Pages
If you only need specific pages rather than splitting the entire document, Extract Pages is more precise. Select individual pages or ranges and get a new PDF containing only those pages.
Alternatives
- macOS Preview — Drag pages from the sidebar to the desktop to create individual page PDFs. Manual but requires no tools.
- pdftk (command-line) —
pdftk input.pdf cat 1-5 output pages1-5.pdf. Excellent for scripting batch splits. - Adobe Acrobat — Full-featured splitting with preview, but requires a paid subscription.