How to merge and split PDFs

What this tool is

Paperwork keeps producing small chores. A contract arrives separately from its attachments and has to go out as one file. A thirty page report needs to travel as two pages. A pile of receipt photos has to become a document. This tool does those three jobs in the browser.

The real difference is where the work happens. Most online converters upload your file to their server, convert it there, and send the result back. This one uploads nothing. The file you pick is opened inside this browser, the new PDF is built here too, and it goes straight to your downloads. There is no network round trip to wait for, and no copy of your document sitting on somebody else's machine.

Four things are on offer: merging several PDFs into one while arranging their pages, splitting a PDF several ways, turning PNG or JPG images into a PDF, and the other direction, turning a PDF into images. No sign up.

There is no cap coded into file count or file size, but there is a real ceiling anyway: this device's memory. Since all the work happens on it, loading several very large files at once can hit that ceiling first.

How to use it

The home page shows four buttons side by side: Merge, Split, Images to PDF, and PDF to Images. Press one and the screen switches to that tool.

Merging several PDFs, with page arranging

Choose Merge and pick a PDF. Picking again adds more files instead of replacing what you already had, and dropping files onto the picker does the same thing. A grid of every page appears below, and you can move pages up or down, rotate them, or delete the ones you do not need. Press the merge button and the pages come back in exactly the order shown, joined into one new PDF. Your originals are untouched.

Pulling out the pages you need, three ways

Choose Split, pick a single PDF, and the page count appears right away. Pick a split mode: each page separately, every N pages, or several ranges separated by semicolons like 1-3;5;8-10. One result downloads as a PDF, two or more come back bundled into a single ZIP.

Turning images into a PDF

Choose Images to PDF and select several PNG or JPG files. Each image becomes one page, in the order they were picked. Press the build button and you get a document rather than a folder full of loose pictures.

Turning a PDF into images

Choose PDF to Images and pick a file. Type which pages to export, or leave it blank for every page. Pick PNG or JPG and press the button: one page downloads as a single image, several pages come back as a ZIP.

In all four tools the result goes to your downloads folder immediately. A short line tells you how many pages were handled, and if something was wrong it says what was wrong instead of failing quietly. Downloaded file names follow the name of the file you picked, worded in whatever language the screen is in.

How it actually behaves

This part covers what the tool really does. Similar tools differ here, so reading it once saves confusion later.

Your files are never uploaded

Reading the file you picked, building the new PDF, and drawing the page thumbnails all happen inside this browser. Our own code has no code anywhere that sends a file somewhere. The result is assembled in memory and handed to the download, so even if your connection drops the page you already have open keeps working.

Exactly one thing does reach the server, and it is a signal about how far a visit got: the page was opened, a tool was used through to a finished file, a link was copied. Each is sent once. No file names, no page counts, no contents. The privacy policy spells this out.

The order things are merged in

Files start in the order the file picker handed them over, and within a file, in their original page order. Sort by name or prefix your file names with 01, 02 and so on when order matters. From there, move any page up or down with the buttons under its thumbnail. There is no drag to reorder yet, only the buttons. With no files at all the tool tells you there is nothing to merge and stops.

Writing page numbers

Separate entries with commas and join runs with a hyphen. Both 1-3, 5 and 2, 4, 7-9 work, and spaces around them do not matter. Anything outside that shape is reported rather than silently skipped: a backwards range like 5-3, a number larger than the page count, a tilde or some other symbol. Getting the wrong file without knowing you typed something odd is the worse outcome, so it speaks up.

One more property worth knowing. Extraction keeps the order you typed. Writing 5, 1-4 produces a PDF with page five at the front, and repeating a number includes that page twice. There is no separate reorder feature, but this covers most of what one would do.

How images become pages

Two formats are accepted, PNG and JPG. Each image becomes a page at its original pixel size. Nothing is scaled to A4 and no margins are added, so mixing portrait and landscape shots gives you a PDF with pages of differing sizes, and the image quality is whatever the original had. HEIC, WEBP and GIF are not handled.

What it does not do

Worth stating plainly. There is no compression, no watermarking or signing, and no text editing. There is no text recognition, so words inside a photo stay a picture. Passwords can be neither added nor removed, and an encrypted PDF cannot be opened at all. There is no undo, so once you delete or rotate a page and change your mind, you pick the file again and start over.

Nothing is saved. Reload the page or close the tab and your selection is gone, so you pick the files again. The upside is that no trace of the document is left in this browser either.

Handy habits

To delete pages, extract the keepers

There is no delete button, but the result is the same. To drop page four from a ten page file, type 1-3, 5-10. Think in terms of what stays rather than what goes and it becomes second nature.

Reordering is extraction in disguise

To move the last page to the front of a twelve page file, type 12, 1-11 and that is the order you get. To interleave two documents, merge them into one file first, then extract from that file in whatever order you want. Chaining the two tools handles most rearranging.

Tidy the photos first

Image conversion never touches the dimensions, so if the PDF is headed for a printer, resize the pictures to a common size beforehand. A crooked scan stays crooked, so rotate it first as well. Order follows the file names, which is another reason to prefix them with 01 and 02.

Give big files a moment

Your own device does the work, so a document with hundreds of pages or a batch of dozens of photos can look frozen for a second after you press the button. The button shows a working label while that happens. Wait rather than pressing twice.

What people use it for

Submitting paperwork as one file

Plenty of forms accept a single attachment only. If the application, the evidence and a bank statement are three files, decide the order and merge them. Sending them separately invites the recipient to read them out of order, and merging removes that risk.

Sending only the relevant pages

When three pages of a hundred page contract are what the other side needs, send those three. The file is lighter and nobody hunts for the clause. Do keep in mind that extraction works page by page, so anything on a page you keep is still there. Blacking out a sentence is not something this tool can do.

Receipts and photos as a document

For an expense claim or an insurance submission, one PDF is kinder to the person receiving it than a dozen loose images. Name the photos so they sort by date and the document comes out in that order.

Files that should not leave the building

Scans of an ID, payslips, a contract that has not been signed yet. Some of those you would rather not hand to a stranger's server, and some workplaces forbid outside uploads outright. Since nothing is sent, this tool suits that kind of document. Checking the result means opening the file you just downloaded.

When you get stuck

It says the page numbers make no sense

Only two symbols are understood, the comma and the hyphen. A tilde as in 3~5, or words as in pages 3 to 5, will not work. Some keyboards helpfully turn a hyphen into a long dash, so delete it and type a plain hyphen. Backwards ranges are refused too, so write 3-5 instead of 5-3.

It says that page does not exist

The page count appears as soon as you pick the file, and any number above it is reported as missing. Covers and tables of contents often push the printed page numbers out of step with the real ones. The numbering here treats the first sheet of the file as page one.

The merge button seems to do nothing

Merging needs at least two files. Usually only one was selected, or a second trip to the picker replaced the first selection instead of adding to it. Count the file names shown on screen first. To grab several at once, hold Ctrl or Shift while selecting, or Command on a Mac.

It fails while opening the file

An encrypted PDF cannot be opened. Remove the password in a viewer, save a copy, and try that. A file that only has a pdf extension while really being something else fails the same way. On the image side HEIC and WEBP are the usual culprits, so convert to PNG or JPG first.

You cannot find the downloaded file

Results land in your browser's downloads folder. The name is fixed, so running the same tool repeatedly leaves a stack of near identical names. Renaming each one as it arrives saves a headache. If nothing arrived at all, the browser may be asking permission for automatic downloads, so check the notice near the address bar.

Your selection disappeared

Since nothing is stored, a reload returns the page to its starting state. The original files are of course still on your device, and anything you already downloaded stays put.