Selecting PDF pages by range
Pointing at thumbnails works until the document is long. In a 400-page scan, finding page 287 by scrolling is slower than typing 287, and picking eleven scattered pages by hand makes it easy to miss one.
A range field helps there. The rules Extract Pages follows are below.
The syntax
A range is a list of page numbers and spans, separated by commas:
3, 18, 42-46That is seven pages: 3, 18, and 42 through 46 inclusive. Spaces around the numbers are fine, so 3, 18, 42-46 and 3,18,42-46 mean the same thing — but a space on its own does not separate entries: write 3, 18, not 3 18. A semicolon or a line break separates them too.
A trailing dash means “to the end”: 42- is page 42 onwards, however long the document is. It is the shortest way to say “everything after the summary”.
The numbers are the document’s own page numbers, 1 to N — the same ones printed under each thumbnail. They are not affected by any page numbering printed inside the document itself, which often starts counting after a cover and a contents page.
Overlaps are allowed, duplicates are not created
1-5, 3, 4-8 is a reasonable thing to type, and Extract Pages accepts it. The result is pages 1 through 8, each one once.
That last part matters: a page appearing twice in what you typed does not appear twice in the output. Duplicating a page is a different operation, and Extract Pages does not double a page because of how a range was written.
What happens when a range is wrong
Three kinds of wrong get different messages:
- Outside the document.
99in a 16-page file is a real page number that this document does not have. The message names the limit: the last page is 16. - Backwards.
11-4counts down. It is not a range. - Not a range at all.
3-xorabccannot be read as page numbers.
In every one of them the selection you already had stays exactly as it was. Extract Pages does not guess: it does not read 3-x as 3 and quietly select one page.
Why typing does not apply immediately
While you type 42-46, the field passes through 4, 42, 42- and 42-4. Some intermediate entries could select pages you did not intend; others are invalid. The selection therefore stays unchanged while you type. Press Enter or Apply, or leave the field, to apply the completed entry. Save also checks the entry before creating a file. An invalid entry shows an error and does not download the previous selection.
Reading it back
The same field is also the answer to “what am I about to save”. Whatever you picked by hand, it shows the normalised version — 3, 18, 42-46 — in the document’s own order, which is the order the new PDF will have. Picking pages one at a time and then reading the field is a quick way to check a scattered selection without counting thumbnails.
Doing it in Extract Pages
- Open the PDF.
- Type the pages in the Pages field and press Enter.
- Check the line the field shows, then Save.