Organize PDF

See every page as a thumbnail, then rearrange the document.

Runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded — your input is processed on this device and discarded when you close the tab.

Your file

Drop a PDF file here, or click to browse. One file at a time, up to 50 MB. Everything is processed on this device only — no file is uploaded.

Load pages Save organized PDF

Drag a thumbnail to reorder it, or use its Earlier and Later buttons — the buttons work with a keyboard and a screen reader. Rotate turns a page in 90-degree steps on top of any rotation it already has. Delete marks a page to be left out of the saved file; Restore brings it back. Your original file is never changed.

Some documents you could put right by page number; others you would only recognise when you saw them. Organize PDF is for the second kind. It lays the whole document out as a grid of page thumbnails, and from there you conduct the arrangement yourself: slide a page towards the front, push one towards the back, give a sideways page a quarter turn, or set a page aside for exclusion — then save the performance as a new document.

Underneath the grid sits a plain piece of bookkeeping. Each thumbnail stands for a record noting which original page it represents, how much rotation you have applied to it during this session, and whether it is currently marked to be left out. Saving walks that list from first to last, copying each surviving page into a fresh file in the on-screen order and settling its rotation by combining your turns with the rotation the page brought with it. The thumbnails, the bookkeeping and the saving are all generated on your own device, inside the browser — your document is not dispatched anywhere to be rearranged on your behalf.

How to use Organize PDF

1. Get the document onto the page. Drag it in or use the browse control — one document only, and no larger than 50 MB. Should it prove to be damaged, or protected by a password, the refusal arrives with the file's name as soon as reading is attempted.
2. Ask for the grid with Load pages. A picture of each page materialises in the sequence the document currently has, captioned with its original number. Lengthy documents ask for a little patience at this stage: thumbnails are produced one after another, so you can follow the count as it climbs.
3. Conduct the running order. Pull a thumbnail to a different slot by dragging it, or move it with the Earlier and Later buttons attached to it. The two methods accomplish the same moves, and the button route remains available to anyone navigating by keyboard or listening through a screen reader.
4. Straighten pages individually. One press of a page's Rotate button turns it a quarter of a circle, on top of whatever rotation was already stored for it, and its picture is drawn again immediately so the effect can be judged before anything is saved.
5. Set aside pages you want omitted. The Delete button flags a page for exclusion, but — importantly — the thumbnail does not disappear. It stays in the grid, clearly flagged, and Restore withdraws the flag. Exclusion only becomes real at the moment of saving.
6. Commit the arrangement with Save organized PDF. Survivors are written out in grid order into a file whose name gains an “-organized” ending. One guard rail applies: flagging literally every page makes saving impossible, because a document needs a page or more to exist at all. Whatever happens, the file you loaded from is left unaltered.

Features

• A grid of genuine page pictures, rendered with the pdf.js family of rendering code — the same lineage as the viewer built into Firefox — so a thumbnail shows the page as it truly is, never a generic stand-in.
• Each drag gesture has a labelled button performing the equivalent move: Earlier, Later, Rotate, Delete and Restore are all present, all named for assistive technology.
• Rotation belongs to the individual page here and accumulates just as it does elsewhere in the suite: one click applied to a page already stored at 90 degrees produces a page at 180 degrees in the saved file.
• Exclusion is provisional right up to the save. Flagged pages remain on display, marked, and a single click returns any of them to the document — there is no irreversible gesture inside the grid.
• A grid in which every page stands flagged cannot be saved; the tool explains why rather than writing a hollow file that no reader could open.
• The saved sequence mirrors the grid without deviation, and the status line confirms the page count of what was written.

Worked example

Take four pages that can be told apart by their widths alone: 595, 635, 675 and 715 points respectively. Now do three things — flag the second page for exclusion, bring the final page one position forwards, and turn the opening page by 90 degrees.

The grid now presents, in the order they will be written: the original first page, wearing its rotation; then the original fourth page; then the original third; with the original second page sitting flagged alongside them. Save, and the outcome is a document of three pages, whose widths measure 595, 715 and 675 points in succession, whose contents are original pages 1, 4 and 3, and whose opening page reports a rotation of 90 degrees while its companions report 0.

That exact choreography is what the tool's automated testing carries out, calling the same state operations the buttons call, then opening the saved document afterwards to verify the succession of widths, the succession of page markers and the rotation — the example here is the specification the code is held to.

Common errors and limitations

• One document per session, with the familiar ceiling of 50 MB on its size.
• Survival of at least one page is mandatory. A grid state in which every thumbnail stands flagged has no save available to it.
• Rendering pictures of pages costs time one thumbnail at a time, so a document running to several hundred pages, on modest hardware, will take a noticeable while to appear in full. Once the grid stands complete, rearranging itself is swift.
• Whole pages are the unit of work throughout. Nothing here can relocate part of a page, squeeze two pages together onto one sheet, or rewrite what a page says.
• A document under password protection cannot be opened for organizing and will be refused by name. Arrange an unprotected version in the application that produced the file, and organize that version.
• The Rotate button adjusts stored page rotation, exactly as Rotate PDF does; a scan that lies a few degrees crooked within its own picture is beyond what stored rotation can level.

• Searching the saved file for a page you flagged. Flagged means excluded from the output — while remaining perfectly present in the original you loaded. Gone too early? Start again from that original, load its pages a second time, and this time leave the page unflagged; or catch the error before saving and press Restore instead.
• Flagging the lot and expecting a file anyway. Refusal in that state is intentional protection, because the product would be an empty document no reader could use. Bring one page back with Restore and saving opens up again; the status line continuously states how many pages saving would produce.
• Reading a crooked thumbnail as evidence of a crooked file. What a thumbnail shows is the page's stored rotation combined with any turns you have applied during the session. A thumbnail that starts life sideways was stored sideways — a single press of Rotate rights it, and the saved document will then present it standing properly.
• Assuming dragging is the only way to travel on a small screen. On touch hardware, drag gestures can be imprecise across long distances. The Earlier and Later buttons advance a page a slot at a time and are often the more accurate instrument for a journey across a large grid.

Frequently asked questions

Related PDF tools

Prefer everything on one page? The original PDF Toolkit merges, splits and rearranges with one shared file list. The full suite is indexed on the PDF Tools hub.

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