Free Rotate PDF
Why are my PDF pages sideways in the first place?
Almost every sideways PDF comes from one of a few causes. A document feeder grabbed a page the wrong way round. A scanner or a phone app saved a landscape page without turning it. A wide table was exported in landscape and joined to a portrait report. Or somebody photographed a page with the phone turned and the app never corrected it. In each case the content is fine, only the view is wrong, and that is why it can be fixed in seconds without touching quality.
How rotation works inside a PDF
Every PDF page carries a small rotation setting, a multiple of 90 degrees. Viewers read that setting and show the page turned accordingly. This tool changes that setting, nothing else. It does not redraw the page, recompress the pictures or rebuild the text. That has three useful consequences. The result is perfectly sharp. The text you could select before is still selectable and searchable. And the file size barely moves.
All common readers, web browsers and printers respect the setting, so the pages come out the right way up wherever the file is opened.
Working through the page thumbnails
When you drop the PDF in, every page appears as a thumbnail, so you can see what is wrong at a glance. Under each one are Left and Right buttons, and each click turns that page by 90 degrees. If most pages are wrong, use Rotate all right, Rotate all left or Rotate all 180 at the top, and then correct the exceptions one by one. Reset puts everything back as it was, which is handy when you have clicked around and lost track. When it looks right, download the new file.
Situations that need a little thought
- Alternate pages upside down. This happens after double-sided scanning where the back sides were fed the other way. Rotate each affected page 180 degrees. Pages follow in order, so it is quick to do.
- A landscape page in a portrait document. Rotate just that page so it reads upright on screen. Remember that it will then print sideways on a portrait sheet, which is usually what you want for a wide table.
- A slightly crooked scan. Rotating works in steps of 90 degrees, so it cannot fix a page that is tilted by a few degrees. That needs a deskew feature in a scanning app. Retaking the scan on a flat surface is often quicker.
Before you sign, stamp or number
Straighten pages first, then do the next job. The Sign PDF tool skips pages that are stored rotated, because the signature position would come out wrong, so rotate the document upright and save it before you sign. The same order works best for page numbers and watermarks: fix the orientation, then add the finishing touches.
A five-minute fix for a whole scanned pack
You receive a 24-page scan where the first ten pages are upright, the next six are upside down and the last eight are sideways. Open it here and the thumbnails make the pattern obvious. Select the upside down pages one by one with Rotate right twice, or click Right on each of the sideways ones once. In total that is about a dozen clicks. Compare that with rescanning twenty-four pages, and it is easy to see why fixing the rotation setting is the sensible way to deal with it.
Check it on another device
Some phone and tablet viewers rotate pages automatically based on how you hold the device, which can make a page look right on screen even though the file still says otherwise. After saving the fixed PDF, open it on a computer too, and look at every page in a normal reading position. If a page still looks wrong there, it is the file that needs fixing, not the viewer.
If you need more than rotation
Rotation is one of several small page jobs. If you also need to move pages, organize PDF pages lets you reorder, rotate and delete in one place. To remove pages only, use delete PDF pages. The edited file is a new download, and your original is never touched.
FAQ
No. Only the page rotation setting changes. Text and images stay exactly the same.
Yes. Every page has its own Left and Right buttons.
Yes. Use Rotate all right, left or 180 at the top.
Rotation works in steps of 90 degrees. A page tilted by a few degrees needs a deskew tool or a new scan.
No. Everything happens in your browser.
No. Remove the password in the program that created it, then rotate the unlocked file here.
The page dimensions stay the same. Only the direction in which the page is shown changes.