The Complete Guide to Free PDF Tools: Merge, Split, Compress and More
PDFs are everywhere — contracts, resumes, scanned forms, invoices — but the basic tasks around them (combining files, shrinking size, pulling out a page) are surprisingly annoying to do without the right tool. Here's a quick guide to the most common PDF tasks and how to handle each one.
Merging multiple PDFs into one
If you've got several PDFs — say, a cover letter and a resume, or a set of scanned receipts — that need to become a single file, use a PDF Merge tool. Upload the files in the order you want them combined, and it stitches them into one document.
Splitting a PDF into separate files
The opposite problem: you have one large PDF and need specific pages as their own file. A PDF Split tool lets you pull out page ranges without touching the rest of the document.
Compressing a large PDF
Email attachment limits and slow uploads make large PDFs a pain. A PDF Compress tool reduces file size, usually by re-encoding embedded images, while keeping the document readable.
Converting PDFs to other formats
Sometimes a PDF isn't the format you actually need. PDF to Word extracts text into an editable document. PDF to Excel attempts to reconstruct tables into spreadsheet rows and columns. PDF to PNG turns each page into a high-resolution image. PDF to Text strips out just the plain text. None of these are lossless for complex layouts — a PDF isn't a native word processor or spreadsheet format — but for text-based documents, they get you most of the way there.
Editing a PDF directly
For quick annotations — adding a note, drawing a highlight, sketching a signature area — a PDF Editor lets you mark up pages directly and export the result as a new PDF.
Other common tasks
Beyond the basics, you'll also run into needing to rotate pages that were scanned sideways, delete specific pages you don't need, add page numbers before printing, apply a watermark to mark a document as a draft, or remove a password from a PDF you own but can't remember the password for.
All of these run entirely in your browser on ToolsFlow — no uploading your document to a server, no account required.