In this time of remote learning, teachers are working daily to provide meaningful work to their students. Many create documents, but some are looking for ready-made documents on popular sites such as Teacher Pay Teacher, Pinterest, or taking resources from online textbooks. Most of these documents are in PDF form and some contain multiple pages, especially unit long work. If you do not want to give the students the entire PDF document at once, it is necessary to split the document or pick and choose certain pages as needed.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to separate PDF files

Method 1: Google Chrome

If you click on the PDF file and it opens in Chrome, you can use the Print option.

1. Open the PDF in Chrome
2. Look through the document and choose the page(s) you want
3. Click the Printer icon in the top right corner of the screen
4. Change the destination to “Save as PDF”
5. Under Pages, choose the Custom option
6. Enter the page(s) you want e.g. 1, 2, 5-7
7. Click on Save and download the extracted page(s)
8. The original PDF will still contain ALL the original pages so you can take out more pages as needed.

Method 2 – Adobe Reader

If you download the file onto your computer and then Adobe reader opens it when you double click on it, you can also use the Print command.

1. Find the file you downloaded and double click on it (or right click on it and choose Open with Adobe Reader
2. Look through the document and choose the page(s) you want
3. Click File and Print
4. Change the Printer to “Adobe PDF”
5. Under Pages to Print, enter the page(s) you want e.g. 1, 2, 5-7
6. Click on Print to print only the extracted page(s)
7. The original PDF will still contain ALL the original pages so you can take out more pages as needed

Method 3 – For Macs Using Preview

If you are using a Mac and need to separate PDF files, you can do it in Preview.

1. Find the file you downloaded and right click on it (Hold CTRL key and click) and choose Open with Preview
2. Click on View (menu bar) and choose Thumbnails to see all available pages in the PDF
3. Click on the page you want and drag it onto the desktop (You may need to resize your Preview window so you can see the desktop)
4. You will have a new PDF of the page you dragged on your desktop but the original will still contain ALL the original pages so you can take out more pages as needed

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic impacting our schools and learning, Teq is making all of our PD courses on OTIS for educators FREE to help schools and districts implement distance learning and online professional development.