I built All Done, a free tools site with 39 free online tools — no signup, no cost. This is a shorter version of a guide I first published on our blog, rewritten for DEV.
Most PDF splitting jobs fall into two buckets, and it helps to know which one you are doing before you open a tool.
Split vs. extract: which job is this?
Splitting cuts one document into several files — a chapter per file, say, or one file every 50 pages. Extracting pulls only the pages you pick out of a document and saves them as a new file, leaving everything else behind.
People search for both jobs with the same words — "split a PDF," "extract pages from a PDF," "separate PDF pages" — so tools often label them differently. The steps below cover both.
1. Split a PDF by page range
Say you have a 200-page ebook and you only need two chapters, roughly pages 45 to 78. Open a split tool, upload the file, choose the range option, and type in that range. The tool hands back a new PDF with just those pages.
Many tools also have handy presets: one PDF per page, or a new file every N pages. If your document has bookmarks — a table of contents, for example — some tools can split at each bookmark, so you get one file per chapter without counting pages by hand.
A few tools can even split by file size, such as "make 10 MB chunks." That is the fastest route when your only goal is getting under an email attachment limit.
2. Extract specific pages
Need pages 2, 7, and 12–15, and nothing else? Use extract mode. You will usually see a thumbnail for every page; tick the ones you want, and the tool builds a new PDF from exactly those pages, in the order you picked them. The source file is never changed.
You can try this with the free Split PDF tool on All Done. It runs entirely in your browser — no signup, no upload to a server — so even a long contract or report never leaves your computer. Pick pages from thumbnails or type a range like 1-3, 5, and download the result.
3. Break an oversized PDF into email-friendly chunks
A 60 MB scanned report will not go through most email, which usually caps attachments at 20 to 25 MB. Splitting it into three roughly 20 MB parts fixes the sending problem — and unlike compression, splitting is completely lossless. Every pixel survives, because you are only repackaging pages into new files.
Name the parts clearly, for example report-part1.pdf and report-part2.pdf, and tell the recipient how many parts there are ("3 of 3 attached") so nothing goes missing. If they need one file again, they can merge the parts back together in seconds.
One thing to remember: splitting never shrinks the total size. Three 20 MB parts are still 60 MB on the recipient's drive. If storage is the real problem rather than the email limit, compression is the tool you want, not splitting.
Golden rule: back up the original first
A good split tool never touches your original file — it only creates new ones. Even so, save a copy first, with a clear name like contract-original.pdf. Disk space is cheap; rebuilding a lost document is not. That matters most for scans you cannot recreate, like a signed contract or a stamped certificate.
Then check your outputs. Open each new file and glance at its first and last pages, and confirm the page count matches what you asked for. A two-second check catches an off-by-one range error before it reaches a client or a teacher.
The short version
- Splitting divides a PDF into several files; extracting pulls chosen pages into one new file.
- Use a page range for chapters and sections, and thumbnails when you need scattered pages.
- Split a big file into 20 MB-ish chunks to get it under email limits, without losing quality.
- Always keep a backup of the original, and spot-check each output before you send it.
Read the full guide on our blog: https://all-done.xyz/blog/how-to-split-pdf-pages
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