Four easy steps to extract pages from a PDF

Sometimes you want to share just a couple of pages from a large PDF. A specific chapter in a book, or a single graph in a report, for example.

It’s easy to print out just the pages you want but splitting these pages into a new PDF file that you can share using say, email, is a bit trickier. That can be frustrating when you either don’t want someone to see the entire PDF, or you want to save the recipient some time.

PDF Editors like Foxit PhantomPDF make light work of this task. With just a couple of clicks, PhantomPDF creates a new PDF file for you, containing exactly the pages you want.

Let’s take a look.

1. First, fire up PhantomPDF and open the PDF file you want to extract. In this example, you want to pull out a couple of pages from a United Nations report.

Once you’ve opened your file in PhantomPDF you’ll see something like this:

2. Next, you need to find the PDF page numbers you want to extract. To make it a bit easier, change the view to “Fit Page” by clicking this button: .

This changes your page view:

In this instance, you want to extract the two pages on reducing inequality. To do that, you need to find the corresponding PDF file page number.

Note that the PDF page number and document’s page number might not be the same. So, you have to scroll down to the pages you want and note the PDF page number as shown at the bottom of the screen.

In this case, the section covering sustainable development shows up on page 42, which you can see at the bottom of the PhantomPDF window: 

The page number for the second and, in my case, the last page, is 43.

3. So, YOU want to extract PDF page 42 to page 43. It’s easy to do that: in PhantomPDF, select the Organize tab from the ribbon, and click Extract:

In the following dialog box, specify the page range you want to extract:

Click OK. PhantomPDF creates a new file for you – you’ll notice a tab saying: “Extracted pages from …”, like the example below:

4. The last step is to save the pages you extracted. Click File, Save and choose a file name:

Click Save again and that’s it – you’re done.

It’s an easy way to send exactly the pages you want, which is really useful when a PDF is a long and complex document. It’s as good as printing out selected pages and is better for the environment, too. Give it a try!