How to Break Up a PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Today’s post explores the extract feature in Adobe Acrobat Pro, which helps users break up a PDF into smaller files. This is useful when creating accommodations for students with disabilities.

Video Guide

If you have a PDF of several hundred pages, you may want to break up the file. In this case, I need a large textbook broken down into smaller segments or chapters so that I can further manipulate the files.

If your file has crop marks, you’ll have to sort that out too.

Before we can begin, make sure you have added your organize pages button to your tools panel.

Step 1

Select the organize pages button from the tools panel on the right side of the screen

Step 2

Select the page thumbnails of the pages you want to have as a separate file. In this case, I am selecting the “front material” content first.

Step 3

Select the extract button and choose delete pages after extracting, and then extract. This will separate the file from the large file. You will then have your extracted pages and the original files minus the extracted files.

Step 4

Save the file and repeat!

In the companion video, I continue this process and end up with a book that has 150 pages, broken down into 10 files.

Now that I have these PDFs, I can do a variety of things with them including:

• Convert the PDFs to Word
• Make the PDFs Accessible
• Turn them into Kurzweil files

Let me be your champion for inclusion. I offer tailored solutions (and self-paced courses!) to ensure your documents meet and exceed compliance expectations. For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel: The Accessibility Guy on YouTube. Subscribe for regular updates!