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Split a PDF
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Cut one PDF into several smaller PDFs: by page ranges, into parts of a fixed number of pages, or one file per page.
Available in pre-release 3.7
Take each part with sumatrapdf-tool merge -o part1.pdf book.pdf 1-10. At a glance:
  • One part, in SumatraPDF: Extract Pages From PDF (CmdPdfExtractPages).
  • Parts by page range: one merge command per part.
  • One file per page: a for loop in cmd.exe or PowerShell, or draw -o page-%d.pdf.
  • Parts of N pages: a PowerShell loop.
sumatrapdf-tool is installed with SumatraPDF and added to PATH. SumatraPDF.exe takes the same arguments.

Extract one part in SumatraPDF #

  1. Open the PDF.
  2. Start Extract Pages From PDF in either of these ways:
    • Right-click the document → Document → Extract Pages From PDF
    • Ctrl + K, Extract Pages From PDF in Command Palette
  3. Check the destination path, and type the pages in Pages To Extract:, e.g. 11-20 or 2,5-7,13- (13- means page 13 to the end).
  4. Click Extract Pages. The new PDF opens in SumatraPDF.
Repeat for each part. More in Extract pages from PDF.

Split into parts by page ranges #

Run one command per part:
sumatrapdf-tool merge -o part1.pdf book.pdf 1-10
sumatrapdf-tool merge -o part2.pdf book.pdf 11-20
sumatrapdf-tool merge -o part3.pdf book.pdf 21-N
N is the last page. For the page list syntax see Merge PDFs.
clean does the same; note the output file comes before the pages and there is no -o:
sumatrapdf-tool clean book.pdf part1.pdf 1-10

Get the page count #

The loops below need the number of pages. info prints it:
sumatrapdf-tool info book.pdf 1
Look for the Pages: 120 line. The 1 at the end limits the rest of the report to page 1.

Split into one file per page #

In a cmd.exe window (replace 120 with the page count):
for /L %i in (1,1,120) do @sumatrapdf-tool merge -o page-%i.pdf book.pdf %i
In a .bat file, double the % signs. This one also reads the page count:
@echo off
for /f "tokens=2" %%n in ('sumatrapdf-tool info book.pdf 1 ^| findstr /b "Pages:"') do set N=%%n
for /L %%i in (1,1,%N%) do sumatrapdf-tool merge -o page-%%i.pdf book.pdf %%i
In PowerShell:
$n = [int]((sumatrapdf-tool info book.pdf 1 | Select-String '^Pages: (\d+)').Matches[0].Groups[1].Value)
1..$n | ForEach-Object { sumatrapdf-tool merge -o ("page-{0:D3}.pdf" -f $_) book.pdf $_ }
This names the files page-001.pdf, page-002.pdf, … so they sort in page order.

One command with draw # 

sumatrapdf-tool draw -o page-%d.pdf book.pdf
%d is replaced by the page number (%03d gives page-001.pdf). Add a page list to write only some pages: draw -o page-%d.pdf book.pdf 1-2,7. In a .bat file write %%d.
Note: draw redraws each page into a new PDF instead of copying it, so the files are bigger (in a test, 38 kB per page instead of 1 kB). Use the merge loop to keep pages exactly as they are.

Split into parts of N pages #

In PowerShell, parts of 10 pages named book-1-10.pdf, book-11-20.pdf, …:
$n = [int]((sumatrapdf-tool info book.pdf 1 | Select-String '^Pages: (\d+)').Matches[0].Groups[1].Value)
$size = 10
for ($i = 1; $i -le $n; $i += $size) {
    $last = [Math]::Min($i + $size - 1, $n)
    sumatrapdf-tool merge -o "book-$i-$last.pdf" book.pdf "$i-$last"
}

Tips #

  • Use merge rather than draw to split: pages, fonts and bookmarks are copied as they are.
  • Bookmarks that point into a part are kept in that part.
  • Run the loops in an empty folder, or put the output in a subfolder (-o parts\page-%i.pdf, after mkdir parts).
  • To remove pages instead of splitting, see Delete pages from PDF.

See also #

SumatraPDF documentation
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Split a PDF
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