Split PDFs by page range, every-page, every-N, or bookmarks

Under the hood

Why splitting in batch needs more than "every page"

The shortcut every online PDF tool offers is "split into individual pages." That is rarely what you actually want. A 200-page case file does not become useful as 200 single-page PDFs. A 50-chapter textbook does not become useful as 1,400 single-page PDFs. What you want is split at the right boundaries — sections, chapters, exhibits, page-count thresholds for inbox limits, contiguous ranges that match your downstream workflow.

PDF Batch Editor offers four split modes that map onto the four boundary types that come up in real document sets: arbitrary ranges (you pick), every-page (each page is a unit), every-N (fixed-size chunks), and by-bookmark (the document tells you where to split). All four work in batch — one configuration applied across hundreds of input PDFs — and all four produce output named according to a pattern you control, not a generic output_001.pdf sequence.

The four split modes

Boundaries that match the document, not the page

Bookmark depth

Top-level sections, or all the way down to sub-bookmarks

When you pick the bookmark split mode, a Bookmark depth input controls how deep into the outline tree the split boundaries reach. Depth 1 — the default — splits only at top-level bookmarks, so an outline organized as Strings → Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello produces one Strings file with all four parts inside.

Raise the depth to 2 and the same document produces four separate files — one per instrument — because the leaf bookmarks now become split boundaries instead of traveling with their parent. Higher depth values target progressively deeper nested entries.

If a file in your batch has no usable bookmarks at all, that file is skipped with a warning and the rest of the batch continues. You don't lose the whole run because one document was missing an outline.

Output naming

Predictable filenames with variable substitution

Every output file is named according to a template you supply. The available variables for range, every-page, and every-N modes:

{name}     The input PDF's name without extension
{n}        Sequential part counter (1, 2, 3, ...)
{pages}    Page-range indicator (e.g. p1 or p3-12)

Examples:
{name}_part{n}.pdf      Report_part1.pdf, Report_part2.pdf
{name}_{pages}.pdf      Filing_p1-12.pdf, Filing_p13-30.pdf

For bookmark mode and labeled ranges, the bookmark title (or your range label) is used as the suffix automatically — the output is named {name}_{title}.pdf regardless of the pattern you typed. So an orchestral score whose top-level bookmarks are Bassoon, Cello, Violin I, ... produces files named Symphony5_Bassoon.pdf, Symphony5_Cello.pdf, Symphony5_Violin_I.pdf. Characters that are illegal in filenames (/ \ : * ? " < > |) are stripped, and duplicate titles within a single document are de-duplicated (a second "Violin" bookmark would become Violin_2).