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Rotate PDF

Private: your file never leaves this device

Drop a PDF here, or click to choose one

You can also paste a file. Up to 100 MB.

Turn sideways or upside-down pages the right way up and save the file with the rotation baked in, so it opens correctly everywhere. It can also straighten only the pages that are actually sideways, which is what a mixed scan usually needs.

About rotating a PDF

Turning a page in a PDF viewer only changes what you are looking at: close it and the page is sideways again, and anyone you send it to sees the original. Rotation has to be written into the file, which is what this does. Every viewer, printer and phone then shows it the right way up.

The page you are looking at is the page you are changing. Every page is drawn as a thumbnail, clicking one turns it a quarter, and the thumbnail is redrawn at the new angle rather than merely marked. That matters because a turned page changes shape, and a list of page numbers and a promise cannot show you that a portrait page is about to end up on its side.

The button worth knowing about is Straighten sideways ones. A scanned batch usually has most pages upright and a few landscape, and turning everything would put the good pages on their side. It looks at each page's real displayed shape, including any rotation already recorded on it, and turns only the ones that are wider than they are tall, in whichever direction brings that particular page upright.

Nothing is re-rendered. The rotation is a property of the page, so text stays selectable, images keep their resolution, and the file size barely changes. Rotations also add up rather than replace: a page already turned 90 degrees and turned again lands at 180, exactly as you would expect. It also makes this the right thing to do before signing a sideways scan, since the signature then goes on the page the way you are looking at it.

How to rotate PDF pages

  1. Drop a PDF on the box, click to choose one, or paste it in. Every page appears as a thumbnail.
  2. Pick the direction you want, right, left or upside down.
  3. Click any page to turn it. The thumbnail turns with it, so what you see is what the file will look like. Click again to keep going round.
  4. Or use the buttons above the grid: turn every page at once, straighten only the pages that are lying sideways, or put everything back.
  5. Press Rotate. The file downloads straight away and nothing is kept here.

Common questions about rotating a PDF

Is my file sent anywhere to be turned?
No. Your document is read and rewritten by JavaScript on this page and is never sent anywhere. The libraries come from this site rather than a third party, so no request about your file goes to anyone at all. The page thumbnails need a renderer that is fetched from here the first time you open a document, and cached afterwards, which is the one thing this page does that needs a connection. Watch it happen rather than believe it: open the Network tab of your browser's developer tools and rotate a file, and you will see the renderer fetched once and nothing after it, with nothing at all carrying your document. Once it is cached, disconnecting from the internet and rotating another file works exactly the same.

Why did rotating in my PDF reader not stick?
Because most readers rotate the view, not the document, unless you explicitly save. The rotation here is written into the page itself, so it travels with the file.

What does "only sideways ones" actually check?
Whether the page, as displayed, is wider than it is tall. That means a portrait page already carrying a 90 degree rotation counts as sideways, which is right, because that is how you see it. Pages that are already upright are left completely alone.

Does it change quality or file size?
No. Rotation is one number stored on the page, so the content is untouched: text stays text, images keep their resolution, and the size changes by a few bytes.

Can I turn just one page?
Yes. Choose Pick pages and write the page numbers, with commas and hyphens: 3, or 2, 5-7. Everything else is left as it is.

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