Getting rid of blank pages in scanned PDFs

Office scanners with automatic document feeders are usually set to scan both sides of every sheet. Great for double-sided documents; less great for the other 90 percent of paperwork, which ends up with an empty page after every real one.

The fast way

1. Open Remove blank pages and add the scan.
2. Leave What counts as blank on Almost white.
3. Press Remove blank pages. The message tells you which page numbers were removed.

Choosing the right setting

A scan of an empty page is rarely perfectly white. There's dust on the glass, a shadow along the edge, sometimes faint show-through from the other side of thin paper. The tool measures how much of each page is darker than near-white and compares it with a threshold.

• Completely white only is for digitally created PDFs where empty pages are truly empty.
• Almost white handles normal scans with a bit of dust or a page edge.
• Also faint marks and scan noise is for thin paper with show-through or old scanners with streaks. Check the result, because a page with a single short line of text could be caught too.

Check before you delete the original

Look at the list of removed pages in the message. If a page with one line on it, like "This page intentionally left blank", was kept, that's correct behaviour: it isn't blank. If you want it gone anyway, use Delete pages with its number.

When the scan contains a mix of single- and double-sided documents, it can be easier to see everything at once: open it in Organize pages, mark the pages you don't want and save.

Prevent it next time

Most scanners have a "skip blank pages" or "blank page removal" option hidden in their settings, often in the advanced menu of the scan profile. Turning it on saves you this step for every future scan.