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The Complete Guide to Merging, Splitting, and Rotating PDFs

April 1, 2026 · 8 min read

PDFs are the universal document format, but they can be frustratingly rigid. Need to combine two reports into one? Extract a single page from a 50-page document? Fix a page that scanned upside down? These are common tasks that traditionally required expensive software like Adobe Acrobat. Today, you can do all of them for free in your browser.

Part 1: Merging PDFs

Merging combines multiple PDF files into a single document. This is useful when you need to:

  • Combine separate invoice pages into one file for accounting
  • Merge a cover letter with a resume
  • Assemble multiple scanned pages into a single document
  • Combine chapters or sections into a complete report

How to Merge PDFs

  1. Open Merge PDF.
  2. Drop two or more PDF files onto the upload area. Merging starts automatically once you have 2+ files.
  3. Files are combined in the order you added them. Remove any you don't need by clicking the ✕ button.
  4. Download the merged PDF when ready.

How it works technically: The tool uses pdf-lib to copy every page from each source PDF into a new document. Fonts, images, and formatting are preserved exactly — it's a page-level copy, not a re-render.

Part 2: Splitting PDFs

Splitting extracts individual pages from a PDF into separate files. This is useful when you need to:

  • Send only specific pages from a large document
  • Extract a single receipt from a multi-page bank statement
  • Break a long document into chapters
  • Remove pages you don't want to share

How to Split a PDF

  1. Open Split PDF.
  2. Drop your PDF file. Splitting starts automatically.
  3. Each page is extracted into its own PDF file.
  4. All pages are bundled into a ZIP file for easy download.

How it works technically: For each page in the source PDF, a new single-page PDF is created using pdf-lib's copyPages method. This preserves all formatting, fonts, and images on each page.

Part 3: Rotating PDFs

Rotating fixes page orientation issues. This is common when:

  • A document was scanned sideways or upside down
  • A landscape page needs to be portrait (or vice versa)
  • Some pages in a document have inconsistent orientation

How to Rotate a PDF

  1. Open Rotate PDF.
  2. Drop your PDF file.
  3. Choose the rotation angle: 90° clockwise, 180°, or 270° (90° counter-clockwise).
  4. Click Rotate and download the fixed PDF.

How it works technically: pdf-lib modifies the rotation property of each page in the PDF. This is a metadata change — the actual page content isn't re-rendered, so there's zero quality loss.

Combining Operations

You can chain these operations together. For example:

  1. Split a large PDF to extract the pages you need.
  2. Rotate any pages that have wrong orientation.
  3. Merge the corrected pages into a new document.
  4. Compress the result to reduce file size.

Since all tools run in your browser, you can do this entire workflow without installing anything or creating an account.

Privacy and Security

All of Convertly's PDF tools process files entirely in your browser. Your documents are never uploaded to a server, never stored, and never shared. This makes them safe for sensitive documents like contracts, financial records, and personal files.

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