I need to delete pages from a PDF, in Windows, locally, for free.
December 11, 2014 6:43 AM Subscribe
I have some very large PDF files, and I have to print out some pages, but not others. Is there some Windows freeware that will help me prepare them for easy printing?
Obviously I could print pages 2-3, and then pages 8-10, and then page 14, and so on, but that would take forever. I'd much prefer to go through the document page by page and tell it "keep this page, discard this page, keep these pages," and then just issue a single print command at the end, as easily as sorting through a physical multipage document.
There must be some freeware for Windows 7 that will help me do this. I can't use an online service because the documents contain sensitive information. Thank you!
Obviously I could print pages 2-3, and then pages 8-10, and then page 14, and so on, but that would take forever. I'd much prefer to go through the document page by page and tell it "keep this page, discard this page, keep these pages," and then just issue a single print command at the end, as easily as sorting through a physical multipage document.
There must be some freeware for Windows 7 that will help me do this. I can't use an online service because the documents contain sensitive information. Thank you!
The print dialogue for Chrome will let you enter the page numbers you want to print in the dialogue box itself, simply as 2-3, 8-10, 14, 16-22, all in a string so it prints those 13 pages out in one shot. If you were looking at your PDFs in Chrome that might give you the ability to do what you want, if not quite in the manner that you've suggested.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:02 AM on December 11, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:02 AM on December 11, 2014 [4 favorites]
In Adobe Reader XI, the print dialogue box has a field where you specify the pages you want to print.
On preview, the menu is similar to the one in Chrome.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:04 AM on December 11, 2014
On preview, the menu is similar to the one in Chrome.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:04 AM on December 11, 2014
The print dialogue for Chrome will let you enter the page numbers you want to print in the dialogue box itself, simply as 2-3, 8-10, 14, 16-22, all in a string so it prints those 13 pages out in one shot.
Adobe Reader does this too.
Most of the PDF manipulation tools I've seen have such horrible user interfaces that I wouldn't bother with any of them. I'd open a Notepad window off to the side of my Reader window, build a page numbers string in that as I walked my document, then paste that into the print dialog at the end.
posted by flabdablet at 7:06 AM on December 11, 2014
Adobe Reader does this too.
Most of the PDF manipulation tools I've seen have such horrible user interfaces that I wouldn't bother with any of them. I'd open a Notepad window off to the side of my Reader window, build a page numbers string in that as I walked my document, then paste that into the print dialog at the end.
posted by flabdablet at 7:06 AM on December 11, 2014
PDF Split and Merge does this and a whole lot more.
posted by Glenn Grothman at 7:07 AM on December 11, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by Glenn Grothman at 7:07 AM on December 11, 2014 [6 favorites]
PDFsam is one of the things I had in mind when I made my remark about horrible user interfaces, for what it's worth.
PDFsam is certainly a useful tool and there are PDF manipulation tasks for which I know of no better Windows freeware, but for page-selective printing, just typing page numbers into a Notepad window is less fiddly.
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 AM on December 11, 2014
PDFsam is certainly a useful tool and there are PDF manipulation tasks for which I know of no better Windows freeware, but for page-selective printing, just typing page numbers into a Notepad window is less fiddly.
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 AM on December 11, 2014
PDFedit from PDF995. I like their products enough that I bought a license.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:16 AM on December 11, 2014
posted by IAmBroom at 7:16 AM on December 11, 2014
Yeah, unless you have some weird software that's overriding the normal Windows print dialog, you should be able to just enter a comma-separated list of pages and page ranges you want to print.
If you don't trust the preview or it's unavailable for some reason, you could just print to PDF first to get the altered PDF as its own file... print to PDF must be built into Windows by this point, right? If not there are numerous free utilities that provide it.
posted by XMLicious at 7:46 AM on December 11, 2014 [3 favorites]
If you don't trust the preview or it's unavailable for some reason, you could just print to PDF first to get the altered PDF as its own file... print to PDF must be built into Windows by this point, right? If not there are numerous free utilities that provide it.
posted by XMLicious at 7:46 AM on December 11, 2014 [3 favorites]
I would also just do what flabdablet suggested. Although PDF Split and Merge is a good little program, I've used it a bunch.
posted by radioamy at 7:57 AM on December 11, 2014
posted by radioamy at 7:57 AM on December 11, 2014
An alternate could be to save a copy of the file with a new filename (such as filename-printversion.pdf), and then scroll through using Acrobat, deleting the pages you want (shift-command-d in Mac), and then print the final product.
It's still a bit fiddly though.
posted by carter at 7:59 AM on December 11, 2014
It's still a bit fiddly though.
posted by carter at 7:59 AM on December 11, 2014
I've had good luck with PDFtk—The PDF Toolkit. It has a freeware version.
posted by Flexagon at 9:05 AM on December 11, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Flexagon at 9:05 AM on December 11, 2014 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: So I tried a few suggestions, but without exception the programs were all terrible. That's not a reflection on you guys; it just seems to be the state of PDF software. I did it the hard way after all. Thanks for your help.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:25 AM on December 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:25 AM on December 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:01 AM on December 11, 2014