Resources » How To Edit PDFs » How to Rearrange Pages in a PDF

Do you need to change the order of pages in a PDF file? Whether you have to edit the order of pages, reorder pages or otherwise simply change the order of your PDF, this click-and-drag tool will make it easy for you.

Change the Order of PDF Pages

The size of a PDF can range from just a couple of pages to an entire e-book with hundreds of pages. When creating a PDF, it’s easy to accidentally place pages out of order or need to rearrange them. The problem is, once the PDF is created, it’s difficult to edit page order when you’re using a PDF reader. To rearrange pages, you’ll need an editing tool.

PDF.Live provides an online editor to change and reorder PDF pages. With the editor, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping the pages in the order of your choice. In this guide, we’ll show you how to rearrange PDF pages however you’d like.

Steps for Reordering Pages in a PDF File

To get started changing page order, you’ll need to convert your PDF into an editable PDF. Simply drag and drop the PDF into the editor and select Edit PDF. This will convert the PDF to an editable PDF and open the PDF.Live online editor, which functions entirely in your browser.

A PDF has been uploaded to the PDF.Live online editing tool.

The PDF live editor has a lot of powerful editing options for PDFs. But today we’ll be focusing on the Manage Pages tab that’s located under the Popular Editing Tools.

The Manage Pages option has been selected from the Popular Editing Tools menu.

This will open the Thumbnail page view on the left side of the PDF.Live editor. This allows you to quickly overview and scroll through the different pages of your PDF. You’ll see smaller thumbnail versions of your PDF pages to get a sense of the content contained on each page.

A slider allows you to zoom in and out of a PDF that's been uploaded to the PDF.Live editing tool.

However, this thumbnail view also allows you to rearrange the order of a PDF’s pages. Simply click and drag the page to wherever you’d like it to be, and the editor will make the change for you. Once you’ve dragged the page to the new location, you’ll see the new order reflected in the thumbnail viewer.

We’ve flipped the order of the pages by clicking page 2 and dragging it in front of page 1. 

In the above example, we’ve flipped the order of the pages by clicking page 2 and dragging it in front of page 1. 

Once you have all the pages where you’d like them to be, you’ll need to download the PDF again. The downloaded version of the PDF will contain all the edits that you’ve made.

If you have a lot of pages in your PDF, you can change the size of the thumbnails by clicking and dragging the bar with the and + signs on either end to change the scale of the thumbnails. This makes it easier to see the content that’s contained within a thumbnail. 

The thumbnail PDF editor shows the pages stacked on top of one another, rather than side by side.

If you want to add new pages to a PDF, select the three dots below any page (preferable after the page where you want to insert a blank page) and then select Page Manipulation and then Insert. Add a new blank page or upload and insert another PDF.

Right click on any page in the thumbnail view and select Page Manipulation and then Insert to insert a blank page.
Add new page, select Blank and then page placement. Here the Above page option is selected. Other options include Below page or specific page placement.

To combine more than one PDF, use the Merge function that combines two or more different PDFs. To learn more about doing this, we recommend checking out the Extract-Split-Separate a Page from a PDF article that details how to extract specific pages from a different PDF and then place them in a new PDF.