4 Free Methods to Split A PDF into Multiple Documents

PDF is widely recognized as one of the most popular document formats for work and learning. Its strong security and easy storage have led users to store substantial data in PDFs, resulting in files with numerous pages. Splitting a PDF into multiple documents has become essential for usability.

While Adobe Acrobat DC is a well-known tool, its cost deters many users. In this post, we’ll share four free methods that use PDFgear, Google Chrome, and the Preview application to efficiently split PDFs. You can choose the method that best suits your situation. Additionally, we offer a step-by-step video tutorial to enhance comprehension.

How to Split A PDF into Multiple PDFs Online with PDFgear

Let’s meet PDFgear, the most useful online free PDF tool that integrates multiple functions. It can be the remedy for all PDF issues like PDF splitting, PDF merging, PDF converting, PDF editing, PDF hyper compressing, and so on. And also, with its tremendous compatibility, PDFgear can support many operating systems including Windows, Linux, and even iPhone, and Android mobile systems.

As one of the outstanding functions of PDFgear, the PDF split tool can help you easily split PDF into multiple PDFs in one step, with no watermark, no registration, and no file limits.

Here are the simple 3 steps you can follow.

Step 1. Upload PDF to PDFgear

Open the page of the PDFgear PDF splitter, and hit the blue button or drag and drop your PDF files to the toolbox to upload them.

Step 2. Input Page Range in PDFgear

Enter the page range you want to export in the blank box. If you need to export multiple files, enter multiple page ranges separated by commas. (For example, you can enter: 1-7, 9-22, and 60-50 in the box, so you can get three new PDF files.) Then, hit “Split”.

Step 3. Save New PDFs from PDFgear

In just a few seconds, the split will complete successfully. Click the blue download button, now you can save your PDFs in the output folder.

When you change the save path of the file, please don’t forget to rename these documents, which can help you distinguish these different PDFs better.

How to Split A PDF into Two PDFs with Chrome

Now almost all web browsers come with PDF readers. You can use the browser downloaded from your computer to open a PDF for reading. At the same time, this function also enables the browser to help you split a PDF into 2 PDFs. The detailed steps are shown below.

Step 1. Open a PDF with Chrome

Drag and drop the PDF file into the new browser window (take the Google browser as an example below), or right-click the file, select “open method”, and open the PDF file with the Google browser.

Step 2. Print Settings in Chrome

Click the printer icon in the upper right corner of the page, select “save as PDF” in the “destination” column of the pop-up window, and then select the “custom” button in the “page” column. Enter the number of pages you want to split in the pop-up blank box. For example, if you want to separate 1-8 pages, enter 1-8 in the box. Perhaps you are also interested in learning how to split PDFs in Adobe Reader DC

Step 3. Save PDF from Chrome

After determining the range of pages you want, click the “save” button. After renaming your new PDF file, save it to the output folder you choose.

The method of splitting PDF with a web browser is very simple, but it also has defects. At present, web browsers only support separating a PDF into two PDFs at a time and do not support splitting a PDF into multiple PDFs at a time. So if you want to get multiple PDF files with different contents, you need to repeat the above steps to create another document and enter a new page range to get the next document.

For those who want to get multiple documents simultaneously, we provide the second method to help you split a PDF into multiple PDF files. Don’t worry, this method is also simple, effective, and free.

How to Split A PDF into Multiple Documents with Preview on Mac

The Preview application is a default software that comes with the Mac. It is powerful and if you can use it wisely, then you will find that it can bring you very many surprises. For example, highlight a PDF, read, merge, query, and crop a PDF, export PDFs to other formats, and add comments or signatures in PDFs. The following steps can give you an idea of how to split PDF into several files.

Step 1. Open PDF in Preview

First, you need to open the PDF on your desktop in Preview. Click the right mouse button and select Open as Preview.

Step 2. Select Thumbnails in the Preview

Click the function area above Preview, and click “View-Thumbnails” to display the PDF as thumbnails for subsequent operations.

Step 3. Split PDF from Preview

In the thumbnail view, you just need to drag the pages you want to split separately to the desktop with the mouse (hold down the Command or Shift key to make multiple selections). And drag out the separate pages that will still exist in the original PDF document and will not disappear.

How to Split PDF into Multiple Files Offline (on Mac and Windows）

PDFgear Desktop PDF Splitter is a productivity tool that efficiently separates multi-page PDFs into single-page or multi-page PDFs. It allows you to customize page ranges or numbers to split or extract an individual page from the PDF.

PDFgear saves time by splitting all desired PDFs at once. This software also offers two flexible splitting options: customizable page ranges to split PDFs into multi-page PDFs or a fixed page range to extract one specific page.

Step 1: Feel free to download PDF Desktop using the following button.

Step 2: Open PDFgear Desktop on your computer and access the Split PDF tool found in the Merge & Split toolbox.

Step 3: To import the PDFs you want to split, click on the Add Files button. Then, customize the Split Mode accordingly and specify the Output Path.

Step 4：Once you’ve finished setting up the preferences, click on the Split button to batch-split all the files in the queue. When the conversion process is completed, you’ll be directed to the output file folder.

Frequently Asked Questions About PDF Splitting

Can I split PDF into multiple documents on Windows for free?

Yes, you can. We highly recommend you use PDFgear free online PDF split tool to help you split a PDF into PDFs with just 3 simple steps. Here is the detailed method:

Step 1. Open the splitting page of PDFgear and upload your PDF.

Step 2. Input the page range and split now.

Step 3. Download the new PDFs.

Can I merge PDFs With PDFgear?

Yes. PDFgear is an all-in-one free online PDF tool that has rich functions including PDF merging. Here is the step-by-step method below: (This article has a detailed description of the steps to merge PDF)

Step 1. Open the tool page of the PDFgear PDF merge tool and upload one PDF.

Step 2. Hit the “Add” button to add other PDFs you want to merge and click “Merge PDF” now.

Step 3. Download the PDF you merged to the output folder.

How do I split a PDF into multiple documents without Acrobat?

If you do not often use the function of splitting PDF, then it is not wise to spend a lot of money to subscribe to Acrobat. PDFgear as a completely free PDF editor allows you to quickly complete the splitting of PDF: open PDFgear>Select Split PDF>Upload files>Click Split.

Is there a free way to split a PDF?

Many of the free software on the market will have additional expenses, but not PDFgear, it is a completely free tool. No matter what features you use, there is no charge.

To Sum Up

When you want to split PDFs without spending on software, our article presents 4 free methods – practical options that vary. You can use Google Chrome or Preview to split PDFs without third-party tools, but note that they do not support batch PDF splitting.

On the other hand, PDFgear allows you to split multiple PDF files simultaneously. Choose the method that best suits your needs.