How to rotate a scanned PDF, delete and reorder pages

You open a scanned PDF and some pages are sideways or upside down, a blank page slipped in, or the pages are out of order. You don’t need to scan it again. You fix the direction by changing only each page’s rotation value, and you fix blank pages and order by moving the pages you keep into a new PDF. This guide explains how each step changes the file and the order to do them in.

Match the problem to the tool

First, page through the whole PDF and note which pages need fixing. Different problems call for different tools.

Problem	Tool	Result file name
A few pages are sideways or upside down	Rotate PDF (rotate buttons under each page)	name-rotated.pdf
The whole batch was scanned upside down	Rotate PDF (All pages [180°])	name-rotated.pdf
Blank or badly scanned pages slipped in	Organize PDF ([Delete])	name-organized.pdf
The pages are out of order	Organize PDF (drag, [Move earlier], [Move later])	name-organized.pdf
Several documents are mixed in one file	Split PDF (page ranges)	name-p1-3.pdf, etc.

If you need to fix both direction and order, rotate first. Organizing carries each page’s rotation over as it is, so the direction you fixed stays put, and the thumbnails show upright pages, which makes blank pages easier to spot. To split a document into several files, see how to save only the pages you need from a PDF.

Rotating only changes the display angle

Each PDF page stores a rotation value separately from its content. The qpdf documentation describes this value as the /Rotate key in the page’s dictionary, and offers a separate option that removes the key and gets the same rotation by modifying the page’s contents instead. In other words, normal rotation doesn’t touch the page content. Microsoft’s documentation for the Windows PDF API describes this value as the number of degrees the page is rotated when it’s displayed or printed, measured clockwise in multiples of 90.

Changing only the rotation value has a few benefits:

• Scanned images aren’t recompressed, so quality stays the same.
• If the PDF contains text, you can still select and search it after rotating.
• Annotations, bookmarks and document properties (title, author and so on) stay as they are.

With Rotate PDF, we rotated only page 2 of a 3-page test PDF (2 KB) right by 90°. It produced a-3p-rotated.pdf (1 KB) with page rotation values of 0°, 90° and 0°, and the page labels and document properties didn’t change. The file got smaller because the file structure was tidied up when saving. (Measured in desktop Chrome; results vary by device and browser.)

Be careful with pages that already have a rotation value. The qpdf documentation points out that you can’t tell by looking whether a page is naturally that way or turned by a rotation value, so it recommends adding to or subtracting from the current angle instead of setting an exact one. Rotate PDF also adds to the direction you see on screen. On a page that already has 90°, pressing right 90° gives 180°. The same documentation also notes that some apps don’t handle rotated pages properly, so open the result once in the app you’ll use and check the direction.

Delete blank pages and fix the order

Organize PDF lets you choose pages to delete and set the order while looking at page thumbnails.

• A page you press [Delete] on is dimmed and marked “Deleted”. Press it again to restore the page.
• Drag thumbnails, or use [Move earlier] and [Move later] on each page to move it one place at a time. These also work from the keyboard.
• A line under the thumbnails shows how many pages remain, like “Remaining: 8 · Deleted: 2”. If you delete every page, “Keep at least 1 page” appears and [Start] can’t be pressed.

Deleting pages 3 and 5 from a 10-page test PDF (4 KB) produced an 8-page ten-10p-organized.pdf (2 KB) with pages in the order 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. (Measured in desktop Chrome; results vary by device and browser.)

Organizing works by moving the remaining pages into a new PDF in the new order. Page content, rotation and annotations are kept, but bookmarks (the outline) and document-wide form structure may not be, and document properties such as title and author are left empty. If the document has bookmarks, keep the original as well.

How to do it with ZEKILO Studio

Both tools run inside this browser, and your file never leaves your device. If your scan is named scan.pdf, here’s how it goes:

1. Drag and drop the PDF onto Rotate PDF or pick it with [Choose files]. Turn sideways pages with the rotate buttons under each page, or the whole batch with All pages [Left 90°], [Right 90°] or [180°]. Press [Start], then save scan-rotated.pdf with [Download].
2. Add scan-rotated.pdf to Organize PDF. Press [Delete] on blank pages, fix the order by dragging or with [Move earlier] and [Move later], then press [Start].
3. Save scan-rotated-organized.pdf with [Download], then open it and check the page count and direction.

Both tools take one PDF at a time. We recommend up to 200 MB on desktop and 50 MB on mobile. Files over 500 MB aren’t processed. A password-protected PDF shows “Password-protected PDFs can’t be processed”, so if you know the password, remove it first with Unlock PDF.

Doing it with apps you already have

On a Mac, Preview can fix these too. Here’s how Apple Support describes it:

• Rotate: each click of the Rotate Left tool turns the page left. To turn it right, hold the Option key and click the Rotate Right tool. For several pages, choose View → Thumbnails or View → Contact Sheet, select the pages, then rotate them.
• Delete: in View → Thumbnails, select the pages to delete, then press the Delete key or choose Edit → Delete.
• Reorder: in View → Thumbnails, drag pages to their new location.

Summary

• Note the pages to fix first. Use Rotate PDF for direction, and Organize PDF for blank pages and order.
• Rotating changes only each page’s rotation value, so quality and text selection stay the same. Pages that were already rotated turn further from the way they look.
• Organizing moves the remaining pages into a new PDF, so bookmarks and form structure may not carry over. Keep the original.
• Rotate first, then organize, and the direction you fixed stays in place.