Rotate PDF Pages

Pages usually end up sideways because a scanner or phone app guessed the orientation wrong, or because a landscape page, such as a wide table or chart, was saved inside a portrait document.

Rotating a page in a PDF viewer often only changes your view. Close the file and it opens sideways again for everyone else. Rotating with this tool saves the new orientation in the file itself.

Pages turn in steps of 90 degrees: a quarter turn left, a quarter turn right, or a half turn for pages that came out upside down.

Rotate only the pages that are wrong. A report with one landscape spreadsheet should keep that page landscape, so turning the whole file would break it.

Rotation can't straighten a slightly crooked scan. If a page is tilted by a few degrees, rescan it with the paper pushed against the edge of the scanner glass.

Phone scanners, such as the ones built into Google Drive and the iPhone Notes app, usually detect orientation automatically, but they often get it wrong on pages that are mostly pictures or tables.

If you plan to merge several files, rotate first. It is easier to spot a wrong page in a short file than in a long combined one.

A correctly rotated file prints the right way round without anyone changing printer settings, which matters when your document goes to an office that prints in bulk.

Organize PDF lets you rotate and reorder pages in one session, and Remove Pages deletes pages you don't need.

Before you send a fixed file, open it on your phone as well as your computer to confirm every page shows the right way up.