Put PDF Pages Back Into the Right Sequence
For documents that are complete but out of order. Move pages with arrow controls against live previews, then export a new file whose pages are copied — not re-encoded — from the original.
About the PDF Page Rearranger
Scanners feed pages in whatever order they were stacked. Documents get combined by whoever had them open first. Someone signs page nine and it comes back appended to the end. The content is all present and correct in each case; only the sequence is wrong, and no amount of re-scanning fixes a stacking mistake faster than simply moving the pages.
This tool shows you the whole document as previews the moment you add it, and gives each page a pair of arrows to step it earlier or later through the sequence. You are moving pages against pictures of themselves, which is the only reliable way to reorder a document full of near-identical scanned forms where page numbers are either absent or printed in the wrong place.
Key Features
- Previews before you decide anything: The full page grid appears on load, so you can see the current sequence rather than deduce it.
- Stepwise movement: One arrow press equals one position, which is precise when a page needs to land between two specific others.
- Source numbering on every card: Each preview stays labelled with the page's position in the file you started with, so you can verify a move rather than lose track of it.
- Export copies the real pages: The new document is built by copying page objects across, meaning resolution, fonts and file size are all carried over unchanged.
- Removal available if you need it: A cross on each card drops a page, useful when the reason the order is wrong is a blank sheet the scanner picked up.
- Sequence work stays local: Rendering and export both run on libraries served from this domain — a document is reordered where it already is.
How to Use the PDF Page Rearranger
- Add the PDF whose page order needs correcting.
- Wait a moment for every page preview to render into the grid.
- Step pages backwards and forwards with the arrows until the sequence reads correctly.
- Save, and download the exported file with its corrected order.
How It Works
The previews come from pdf.js rendering each page at 0.28 scale into a canvas. Your arrangement is tracked as an ordered list of original page indices, and on export pdf-lib copies exactly those pages, in exactly that order, into a newly created document that is then serialised to a blob for download.
What this does not do is renumber anything. If the pages carry printed page numbers or a numbered footer, those are part of the page content and they move with the page — so a document reordered here can end up reading 1, 2, 5, 3, 4 in its own footers. Adding fresh numbering afterwards with the page number tool is the usual fix. Similarly, a table of contents with page references will no longer be accurate, since nothing rewrites the references.
When You Need It
A customs broker submits shipping document sets that the receiving authority requires in a fixed sequence — invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, bill of lading. The documents arrive from the exporter as one scanned PDF in whatever order they were faxed. Reordering takes a minute against thumbnails, and since the set carries commercial values and consignee details that competitors would find useful, doing it without routing the file through an intermediary is the sensible default.
A musician scanning a borrowed score finds the copier has interleaved the sheets and the page turns land mid-phrase. The previews make the correct sequence obvious at a glance in a way a list of page numbers never would, because you can see where the music continues.