240-page application pack arrives. Reviewer only needs budget and letters of support. Budget is on pages 41-58. Letters of support are pages 211-219 at the back. Person can send the entire file and hope the reviewer finds the right section, but that wastes reviewer time and contains 200+ pages that no one wants reviewer to read. Better option is to remove unnecessary pages and only send the pages that are needed.

This happens all the time, contract bundle and only signature pages need to be checked, report is long and each department needs to check only their chapter, scanned invoices are bundled together and need to be pulled apart. This document will discuss the strategies that can be used to quickly identify the needed pages, and will also include a Windows workflow and a checklist to be used before the pages are sent.

Start with a page map

Before opening any page splitting software, identify what the reviewer actually needs. Open your PDF with your usual viewer, and if you don't have thumbnail view, turn it on. Note what pages contain the information. Check bookmarks if available, as they sometimes mark chapters or appendixes.

One trap deserves attention. The number printed on a page and the position of that page in the file are often different. A report with a cover page, table of contents and other front matter will start numbering the main content on page 1. Later pages that include cover sheets, such as a revision page, should be numbered in the same fashion. Using tools that split by position will not account for front matter. The page counter in your viewer should be used as a guide, instead of the numbers printed on the paper.

Next, you will need to enter number ranges in a format that is acceptable to your PDF tool. A good rule of thumb is to separate page numbers with commas and connect ranges with a hyphen. The examples included in the CoolUtils product page use this format and most PDF tools accept something similar.

Ask yourself whether it would be easier for the reviewer to receive one file or several. If it’s the former, combine all of the pages into a single PDF. If the latter, then name the PDFs in a sensible manner so that they know which file should be reviewed by whom.

It’s a good idea to create a new folder for each PDF review request, and store the final PDF in this folder (rather than next to the original PDF - see next tip!). Inside this new folder, it can also be handy to have a subfolder called Original that contains the original, unedited, PDF file. This means that there’s absolutely no confusion over which PDF is the final version to be emailed to the reviewer! Trust me on this one, nothing beats the horror of attaching the wrong PDF to an email at 5pm! Filenames should tell the reader what is inside without opening anything. A pattern that holds up well combines project, section, page range and version:

• GrantPack_Budget_p41-58_v1.pdf
• GrantPack_LettersOfSupport_p211-219_v1.pdf
• GrantPack_ReviewPacket_p41-58-211-219_v1.pdf

Skip words like “final” and “new,” avoid special characters, and keep the page range in the name so anyone can trace the file back to the source. If the reviewer returns comments, you will know exactly which pages they saw.

A Windows desktop workflow

PDF splitting with CoolUtils is a desktop application for Windows that can split PDFs by page ranges, into individual pages, by chapters (based on PDF bookmarks), or extract selected pages. As it’s a desktop app, all processing is done locally on your computer and it doesn’t upload your files anywhere.

PDF Splitter by CoolUtils could be a good option for more confidential documents like contracts, medical records, application packages, etc. Online tools are absolutely safe for splitting benign files, but for more sensitive ones it’s best to go with desktop solutions.

This article describes the standard edition. The same product page also lists PDF Splitter Pro, which adds splitting by text lines such as invoice numbers, and a server version, PDF Splitter X, that runs without a window for web servers. A review packet rarely needs either.

The basic sequence looks like this:

1. Add the file.Click Add File and browse to the PDF, or drag it into the main window.
2. Choose the method.The options include selected pages, custom ranges, bookmarks, blank pages, barcodes, maximum file size, and odd or even pages. For the grant pack, pick selected pages.
3. Enter the rangesfrom your page map, for example 41-58,211-219.
4. Set the output folderto the review folder you created earlier.
5. Check the naming.A built-in renamer builds new names in the form [Name].page#.pdf, and numbering can start from any digit. Adjust the template so the names stay descriptive.
6. Click Splitand wait for the files to appear in the folder.

Other settings suit other jobs. Splitting by bookmarks works for long reports where each chapter goes to a different reader. There’s a free 30-day trial version and the full version is a one-time $59.90 license purchase (prices and offers subject to change, check the product page for current details) and works with Windows 7 to Windows 11.

Password protection. This is handy if you’re emailing PDFs to multiple recipients and some of the data is confidential.

Batch mode (command line). If you find yourself performing the same PDF manipulation tasks every week, you can have this PDF tool perform them automatically from the command line.

Split by blank pages - This works well for scanned PDFs where every document is separated by a blank page.

Combine pages - You can combine pages together to create multiple PDFs. For example, you can take a 10-page PDF and combine every two pages together to create 5 two-page PDFs.

Final checklist before you send

Run through this list every time, even for a three-page extract:

• Open every output file, not only the first one.
• Confirm the page count matches your ranges (18 + 9 = 27 in the example).
• Check the page order. Pages should follow the original sequence unless the reviewer asked otherwise.
• Look at the first and last page of each file to make sure the cut is clean, with no half-finished section at the start and no missing signature page at the end.
• Confirm filenames follow your pattern and include the page range.
• Scan for pages that should not be shared, such as personal data or internal notes.
• Keep the original PDF unchanged in its own folder.

Keep the source, share the slice

A reviewer reads faster when the file contains only what they need, and you share less than you would by forwarding everything. The routine stays the same whatever software you use: map the pages, prepare a clean folder, name files so they explain themselves, split, then check the result against the original before it goes out.