PDF toolsSplitting by chapter is just splitting by page ranges, once you know where each chapter starts. The work is mostly in finding those page numbers.
1. Find the chapter start pages
Open the PDF in a viewer that shows the page number in its own toolbar, such as your browser or our PDF viewer. Note the viewer's page number, not the one printed at the bottom of the page: the printed numbers often skip the cover and contents, so "page 1" of the text might be page 9 of the file.
If the PDF has a table of contents, check two or three entries against the viewer to work out the offset. If chapter 2 is printed as page 31 but sits on file page 39, the offset is 8; add it to every entry.
2. Write the ranges
In Split PDF, choose By page ranges and enter the ranges separated by commas. For a book whose chapters start on pages 1, 39, 77 and 120:
1-38, 39-76, 77-119, 120-
The trailing dash means "to the end", so you don't need to know the last page number. Each range becomes its own file, and several files come back together in a ZIP.
3. Keep the front matter
If every chapter should keep the cover or a legal notice, it's easier to split first and then add the cover to each part with Merge PDF. For just one chapter, Extract pages accepts a list like 1, 39-76 and keeps the pages in that order.
Other ways to split
- Every N pages is useful for fixed-length documents, such as a batch of two-page invoices scanned in one go.
- One file per page turns each page into its own PDF, for example to send slides separately.
Name the files
The parts come out numbered in order. Renaming them to manual-ch1-setup.pdf rather than leaving manual-1.pdf takes a minute and saves everyone else guessing.