Split PDF Pages in Half

About the Split PDF Pages in Half

Cut every page of a PDF into pieces that become pages of their own: left and right halves for scanned book spreads and A3 sheets that hold two A4 pages, top and bottom halves, quarters, or a custom grid of up to 10 × 10. Scans are rarely cut exactly in the middle, so drag the cut line on the preview (or type its position) and step through the pages to check it; an overlap lets each piece reach a little past the cut so nothing in the gutter is lost.

Number the pieces from the right for manga and Arabic or Hebrew books, keep the cover and back cover whole, or leave alone every page that is already a single page. Nothing is redrawn or turned into a picture: each piece is a copy of its page with a smaller page box, so text stays sharp and searchable, the file hardly grows, and links and bookmarks keep working. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.

Common uses

• Turning a phone or flatbed scan of an open book (two pages per image) into single pages before OCR.
• Splitting A3 sheets from an office scanner into the A4 pages they hold.
• Undoing a 2-up or 4-up handout so each slide or page is on its own again.
• Cutting a sheet of tickets, labels or cards into separate pages.

How the pieces are made

Each piece is a copy of its page whose page boxes — the media box and the crop box (ISO 32000-1 §14.11.2) — are set to that piece. Readers and printers show only that part, so the piece looks and prints like a page of its own. The copies share the page’s text, fonts and images instead of duplicating them, which keeps the file almost the same size and the quality exactly the same.

The cut follows the page as it is shown: on a page that is turned with /Rotate, “left half” is the left half you see.

Cut position, overlap and order

• Cut position: for halves and quarters the cut can sit anywhere from 5% to 95% of the page. The same position is used for every page — check a few pages with the arrows, since scans drift.
• Overlap: each piece reaches this far past every cut it touches, so both pieces show a strip of the gutter. With a 5 mm overlap on a 420 mm spread cut at 50%, the pieces are 0–215 mm and 205–420 mm.
• Order: pieces are numbered row by row, left to right — or right to left for books read that way. Custom grids are cut into equal parts.

What is kept

Text stays text, so the result can be searched, copied and run through OCR. Links, comments and form fields stay on the piece that holds their centre. Bookmarks and links that pointed to a page now open its first piece. Pages kept whole are copied as they are.

Limitations

• The rest of the page is hidden, not deleted: the other half is still stored in each piece, so searching or copying text can find words from it, and anyone can show it again in a PDF editor. To remove content for good, use Redact PDF.
• The cut is straight and the same on every page; a scan that is skewed or shifted from page to page may need a larger overlap.
• Encrypted or password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first with Unlock PDF.
• Splitting makes a new file, so a digital signature in the original isn’t valid in it.
• The first use downloads the PDF engine once, so it needs an internet connection.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.