Rotate PDF

How to turn the pages of a PDF

Scanners and phone cameras both produce sideways pages, and a reader that lets you turn a page on screen usually forgets it the moment the file is closed. Turning the page in the file itself is what fixes it for everybody who opens it afterwards, and for the printer.

1. Drop the PDF on the box at the top.
2. Choose All pages, or Only these pages and type the page numbers, like 1-3, 5.
3. Press Turn left, Turn right or Turn upside down. The pages you chose all turn together.
4. To fix one page, click its picture. Each click turns that page a quarter more.
5. Look at the pictures. They show the pages as they will be saved.
6. Press Save the PDF.

A turned page is a note, not a redrawing

A PDF page carries a small note saying which way up to show it. That is what this changes. Nothing on the page is redrawn, no picture is re-squeezed, and the file does not get bigger or blurrier - it is the same page with different instructions on it.

Because of that, a turn can always be undone. Turn it back and you have the file you started with, letter for letter.

It also means the text stays text. Every other way of turning a page - printing it to a new file, screenshotting it - costs you the ability to search and copy the words. This does not.

When only some of the pages are wrong

That is the usual case with a scan: the feeder took a few sheets the other way round. Click just those pages, or choose Only these pages and type their numbers, which is quicker in a long document. The count at the top says how many pages you have changed, so you can see at a glance that you caught them all and did not nudge one by accident.

If every page is wrong in the same direction, keep All pages, use the turn buttons and do not touch the pictures at all.