Rotate PDF pages

Why rotate PDF pages

Scanners and phone apps often save pages sideways or upside down: a landscape spreadsheet in a portrait batch, the back of a two-sided form fed in the wrong way round, a receipt photographed on its side. Turning the view in your PDF reader fixes it only on your own screen, and the next person who opens the file sees the same sideways page. This tool turns the pages in the file itself. Pick the angle, click the thumbnails of the pages that need it (or none, to turn every page) and check the preview before you save. The Odd and Even buttons select every other page, which fixes duplex scans where all the backs came out upside down.

How to rotate pages in a PDF

1. Drop your PDF in the box, or click to choose it.
2. Choose 90° clockwise, 180° or 90° counter-clockwise, then click the pages to turn, or leave all of them unselected to turn every page.
3. Click Rotate and save, and download the PDF.

What changes when you convert

Saved rotation versus view rotation

Most readers have a rotate button that only changes how the page is shown until you close the file. Here the turn is written into each page's rotation setting in the PDF, which Acrobat, Preview, browsers and printers all follow, so the page opens upright everywhere.

Nothing is redrawn

The page content is not converted to an image. Text stays selectable and searchable, links and form fields keep working, bookmarks and page labels stay, and images keep their quality. The file stays about the same size.

Rotation adds up

A page that is already turned in the PDF is turned further by the angle you choose. The thumbnails show each page as it will be saved, so you can see when every page is upright before you download.

Only quarter turns

PDF page rotation works in steps of 90 degrees. A scan that is crooked by a few degrees cannot be straightened this way; that needs a scanner app with a deskew function.

Signed and protected PDFs

Changing the rotation changes the document, so a digital signature is no longer valid afterwards. Encrypted PDFs, including ones that open without a password but restrict editing, cannot be changed here; the tool says so instead of producing a broken file.