Large PDFs are often more document than you need. A 90-page annual report where you need pages 12–15. A contract where only the signature page is relevant to the other party. A textbook chapter you want to share without the whole book. Splitting a PDF extracts exactly the pages you need into a separate file, without touching the original.
Portimg's PDF tools handle this in the browser — no software to install, no account required.
How to split a PDF with Portimg
Go to portimg.com and navigate to the Split PDF tool. Upload your file, select the pages or page range you want to extract, and click Split. The tool processes your selection in seconds and returns the extracted pages as a new PDF, which you can download directly or as a zipped folder if you've split into multiple separate files.
The process is the same whether you're pulling a single page or a contiguous range. If you need non-contiguous pages — say, pages 3, 7, and 14 from a 50-page document — check whether the tool supports multi-selection, or plan to make separate extractions and merge the results afterward using the PDF merge tool.
Before you split
A couple of things worth doing before you start:
Preview the document first. Page numbers printed on a PDF don't always correspond to their position in the file — a document with a cover page and table of contents may have its first numbered page at position 3 or 4 in the file. Preview or scroll through to confirm the page positions you need before selecting your range, especially on documents with front matter or appendices.
Check for bookmarks. Well-structured PDFs often include a bookmark panel with chapter or section markers. If yours does, use the bookmark structure to navigate to the right sections rather than counting pages manually. It's faster and less prone to off-by-one errors on long documents.
After splitting
If the extracted pages will be sent by email or uploaded to a web form, check the file size before sharing. Pages extracted from a high-resolution or image-heavy PDF can still be large even as a small number of pages. Running the split file through Portimg's PDF compressor before sending usually reduces the size substantially without affecting readability.
It's also worth renaming the output file to something descriptive before sharing — "contract_signature_page.pdf" communicates clearly what the recipient is receiving in a way that "split_output_3.pdf" doesn't.
Common situations
The use cases that come up most often are straightforward. Invoices in a batch-generated PDF that need to be separated per client. A legal document where only certain sections are relevant to a particular party. Study materials that are more useful broken into topic-by-topic chunks than as one long file. A portfolio where different sections suit different recipients. Job applications where a combined document needs to be split back out for a system that accepts only one file per document type.
In each case, the alternative — printing and rescanning, or asking the sender for a different version, or sending the entire document and asking the recipient to find the relevant pages — is slower and less professional than a clean extract that contains exactly what's needed.