How to delete pages from a PDF
- Drop your PDF onto the box above, or click to browse. It is read on your own device and the page count appears straight away.
- Type the pages you want to remove — single numbers, ranges, or a mix of both separated by commas.
- Check the live preview under the box. It tells you how many pages will be removed and how many will be left.
- Click Delete Pages to download the trimmed document as
trimmed.pdf. The original file on your disk is never changed.
How the page range box works
You can describe any selection of pages with commas and hyphens. A plain number picks one page, and a hyphen picks everything between two numbers, including both ends:
- 3 — removes page 3 only.
- 2-5 — removes pages 2, 3, 4 and 5.
- 1, 4, 9-12 — mixes the two: removes pages 1, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 12.
Pages are counted from the front of the file starting at 1, so the very first sheet is always page 1 — even when the document's own printed numbering starts somewhere else because of a cover or a roman-numeral preface. Order and repeats don't matter: 5, 2, 5 is read the same as 2, 5. A backwards range such as 7-5 is understood as 5-7, and numbers past the end of the document are trimmed to the last real page, so 9-999 on a 12-page file simply removes pages 9 through 12.
Why remove pages from a PDF?
Scanners are the most common reason. Run a stack of single-sided sheets through a duplex scanner and you get a blank page behind every one of them. Deleting the blanks can halve the length of the document and makes it far easier to read on a phone.
Cover sheets are the next: fax headers, transmittal pages, routing slips and "this page intentionally left blank" separators all stop being useful the moment a document is filed or emailed.
The most important reason, though, is what you don't want to send. Contracts and reports often carry internal appendices, pricing breakdowns or reviewer notes at the back. Removing those pages before you share the file is far safer than trusting the recipient to stop reading. Because the pages are genuinely deleted from the document rather than hidden or covered with a black box, there is no text left underneath for someone to select, copy or un-redact later.
Is it private and safe?
Yes. Toolyard removes the pages inside your browser, on your own device. Your file is never uploaded anywhere, so there is no copy on a server for us or anyone else to see — which matters when the whole point is to strip out confidential pages. Once this page has loaded you can even go offline and the tool keeps working. Your original file is also left completely untouched: the result always arrives as a separate download, so a mistyped range costs you nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Can I delete a single page?
Yes. Type just that page number, for example 7, and click Delete Pages. Every other page is kept exactly as it was.
Does deleting pages make the file smaller?
Usually yes, because the content of the removed pages is dropped. Shared resources such as embedded fonts stay in the file, so the saving is roughly proportional to how much of the document you removed.
Will the remaining pages be renumbered?
The pages themselves are untouched. Page numbers printed inside a document are part of the page artwork, so a sheet that says 9 still says 9 even if it is now the third sheet in the file.
Can it open password-protected PDFs?
No. Encrypted PDFs have to be unlocked first in the app that created them. This tool tells you when it cannot read a file instead of producing a broken one.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The whole process runs in your browser on your own device, so your file is never sent anywhere and no copy is stored.
Is it free?
Completely free, with no watermarks, no sign-up and no limit on how many files you can trim.