How to Remove Pages From a PDF
The short answer
To remove pages from a PDF, open it in a tool that lets you delete page thumbnails, pick the pages to remove, and save. Free online tools do this in about a minute — and on a Mac, Preview handles it without any download.
Remove pages from a PDF online
- Open the free PDF tools page and pick the page-removal tool.
- Upload the PDF — you’ll see page thumbnails.
- Select the pages to delete, then download the cleaned file.
Works on any device, no install, and most tools let you delete a range or cherry-pick individual pages. For more than occasional use, this is the fastest route.
Remove pages on a Mac with Preview
Preview makes this trivial: open the PDF, view the thumbnail sidebar (View → Thumbnails), select the pages you don’t want, and hit Delete. Then File → Export as PDF to save the result. Free, offline, and built into every Mac — genuinely the easiest way to do this.
Remove pages on Windows
Windows has no built-in page editor. Options: a free online tool, or Microsoft Edge’s PDF viewer — open the PDF in Edge, use the page navigation, and the Print dialog’s “pages” field can help you keep only what you need (print the pages you want to keep to a new PDF). It’s a workaround, but it’s free and requires nothing.
The honest part
Removing pages is permanent — there’s no undo. Before you delete, make sure you have the original somewhere, because once you save, those pages are gone for good.
Also worth knowing: if you’re removing pages to lighten the file, you’ll often get a bigger win by compressing the PDF instead — deleting 10 pages of a 100-page scan barely shrinks it, because the file size lives in the images, not the page count.