How to reorder pages
- Add the PDF. Thumbnails appear in the current order.
- Drag a page to its new position. Drop it on the page it should take the place of.
- Or use ← and → under a page to move it one step at a time. That suits keyboards and touch screens.
- Click Save in this order and download.
Why page order goes wrong
- Double-sided scans on single-sided scanners. Scan the fronts, flip the stack, scan the backs, and you get 1, 3, 5… then 6, 4, 2. Reordering interleaves them.
- Several scanning sessions. Pages added later end up at the end.
- Merged files. When you combine documents, the order you want may change once you see them together.
- Appendices in the wrong place. Moving a page or two is quicker than re-exporting from the source.
What the new file keeps
Each page is copied into the new order exactly as it is, with its text, images, annotations and form fields, so there is no loss of quality. The document outline (bookmarks), if the original had one, is not carried over. Its entries point at specific pages and would send readers to the wrong place after a reorder. Internal links between pages, such as a contents page linking to sections, point to page objects and generally still work after reordering.
Long documents
On long documents dragging across many rows is fiddly. Two approaches work better:
- Use Split to cut the document into sections, then Merge them back in the new order. Merge's file list is short and easy to arrange.
- Use Split's page ranges to write the order directly:
1-4, 10-12, 5-9, 13-in one range group is not possible, but each range as its own file, merged back, achieves it.
After reordering
If the document has printed page numbers that are now out of sequence, add new ones with Add page numbers, positioned to cover or sit beside the old ones. If you are preparing a submission, check the order against the agency's checklist; many list documents in a required order.
Thumbnails render one page at a time so the page stays responsive, and saving only copies pages, so even a few hundred pages save in seconds. Your original file is not modified; you download a new copy with -reordered in its name.
Accessibility
Drag and drop is not the only way: every move can be made with the buttons, which work with a keyboard and screen readers announce them by page number. If you use a screen reader, the page list reads out each page number and its current state.
On a phone or tablet
Dragging thumbnails on a small screen can be awkward, so every page also has buttons to move it one place earlier or later. For larger moves, it is often quicker to split the document into chunks and merge them in the order you want. The saved file is identical either way.
Interleaving a double-sided scan
A single-sided scanner used for double-sided paper gives you all the fronts, then all the backs in reverse. To fix a short document, drag each back page after its front. For a long one, split the fronts and backs into two files, then reorder each and merge; or rescan using your scanner's duplex mode if it has one. Check the result by reading page by page; mistakes are easy to miss in thumbnails.
Keeping track of what you changed
If the order matters legally, as with exhibits in a bundle, keep a note of the original and new order, or keep the original file alongside the reordered one. The download gets a new name with -reordered, so the original is never overwritten. When the document has an index or contents page, update it to match, then add fresh page numbers with Add page numbers.
Reordering several files
To reorder whole documents rather than pages, use Merge: its file list is the order of the combined document, and you can move files up and down before merging.
Does reordering affect signatures or links?
Visual signatures and stamps move with their pages and are unaffected. A cryptographic digital signature will show as invalid after any change to the file, so reorder before a document is digitally signed. Links inside the document generally still point at the right page, because they target the page itself rather than its position.
Privacy: the file stays on your device
Online PDF services upload your document to their servers, process it there and keep it for a while. This tool does the work in your browser. The file is read into the page's memory, processed by open-source libraries (pdf-lib for editing and pdf.js for rendering) in a background worker, and the result is offered back as a download. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account, and closing the tab discards everything. You can check it: open your browser's developer tools, watch the Network tab while you run the tool, and you will see no upload. After the page has loaded once it also works offline.