How to rotate pages in a PDF
- Drop your file on Drop a PDF here or click to choose. A small picture of every page appears.
- To turn one page, press Left or Right under it. Each press adds a quarter turn, and the picture shows the result.
- To turn many pages, fill Pages to rotate with numbers like
1, 3, 5-8, or the wordsodd,even,landscapeorportrait. Leave it empty for all pages. Then press Rotate left 90°, Rotate right 90° or Rotate 180°. - Press Save rotated PDF, then download the result. Undo all turns clears your changes.
How rotation is stored
Every PDF page can carry a rotation setting, a multiple of 90 degrees clockwise (the Rotate entry in the PDF specification). The tool adds your turns to each page's existing setting, so a page already stored at 90 degrees that you turn right by 90 ends at 180. The text, images and drawing on the page are not touched, and bookmarks, links and form fields stay as they were. The page pictures come from Mozilla's pdf.js, and nothing is uploaded.
Worked example with the sample file
Click Try a sample 4-page PDF. Page 1 and page 3 are portrait, page 2 is landscape, and page 4 is stored upside down. Type 4 in Pages to rotate and press Rotate 180°. Page 4 now reads "Turn 180°", the heading shows "(4 pages, 1 to turn)", and its picture is upright. Save rotated PDF reports "Turned 1 page out of 4" and offers sample-4-pages-rotated.pdf. Try landscape with Rotate right 90° and only page 2 turns.
Limits and edge cases
- Password-protected or restricted PDFs are refused with a message, because they cannot be read here.
- The file is written again, so a digital signature on it will no longer validate.
- The words
landscapeandportraitgo by the page as it looks now, including turns you have already made. - Saving stays off until at least one page has a turn. A page number that does not exist, like 9 in a 4-page file, is reported under the field.
- If the picture of a page cannot be drawn, a blank box stands in for it, and rotation still works. To keep only some pages, use the PDF page extractor, and to join files afterwards, use the PDF merger. For photos, use the image rotator.
PDF rotation questions people ask
How do I rotate just one page in a PDF?
Open the file, find the page in the grid and press Left or Right under it until the picture looks right. Then press Save rotated PDF. Only the pages you turned are changed.
How do I rotate every other page or all landscape pages?
Type odd, even, landscape or portrait in the Pages to rotate field, then press one of the rotate buttons. Numbers and ranges like 1, 3, 5-8 work too, and an empty field means every page.
Does rotating a PDF lower the quality?
No. Rotation is a setting stored on each page, so the text, images and drawings are not redrawn or recompressed. The file size stays almost the same.
Will the rotation still be there when I open the file elsewhere?
Yes. The turn is saved inside the PDF, and PDF readers follow it. You can check it in the picture of each page before you save.
Can I rotate a password-protected PDF?
Not here. A locked file is refused with a message. Open it in a PDF reader with the password, save an unlocked copy, and rotate that copy instead.
Method reference: PDF 32000-1 specification, page dictionary.