How-to guide

How to split a PDF into chapters or sections

A long report or ebook is often easier to reference broken into its individual chapters or sections rather than scrolling through one continuous file.

Finding the chapter breaks

Before splitting, skim the page thumbnails or the document's table of contents to note which page each chapter or section starts on — that gives you the ranges to extract.

Splitting by section

  1. Open the Split PDF tool and drop in the document.
  2. Note the starting page of each chapter from the table of contents or by scanning the thumbnails.
  3. Select and extract each chapter's page range as its own file, repeating for every section.
  4. Download each chapter file, or grab them together as a zip if you split them all in one session.

Ready to try it yourself?

Split your document by chapter →

Frequently asked questions

Does this work if the document doesn't have a table of contents?+

Yes — you can scroll through the page thumbnails to find each chapter's starting page manually.

Can I later merge the chapters back into one file?+

Yes, using the Merge PDF tool with the chapter files in the right order.