How can I rearrange pages without drag/drop thumbnails?

[johnengineer14]

I have a PDF document where I have to reorganize several page orders. How can I do this without relying on dragging and dropping thumbnails? The issue is the UI for the thumbnails is a terrible interface. For example if my document is 40 pages, and I grab the 2nd page thumbnail and try to drag it down the list, it will be so slow to respond that it becomes excruciating. Or there is an area of the upper and lower bound of the sidebar where you have to hover the cursor to initate scrolling that seemingly doesn't work each time. Scroll wheel of course does not work when dragging a file.

[ls_rbls]

Hi,

Have you tried using the Organize Pages tool?

[try67]

You can extract the pages as a new file, delete them from the original and then re-insert them in the desired location.

[Thom Parker]

Acrobat isn't set up for manually reorganizing large documents. But there is a simple script you can run from the console window. Just type this into the console

movePage(2,10);

This moves page 3 to right after page 11. Page numbers in JavaScript start at 0. 

You'll find a tutorial here on the console window:

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/Free_Videos.cfm#JSIntro

If there was a pattern to how you wanted to move the pages you could write a small script to do it.

You could also do this another way. Rearrange the bookmarks and then use the "ReOrder Pages from Bookmarks" tool listed here to rearrange the pages:

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/Automation-Tool-Descriptions.cfm

There's also a "Move Pages" Tool listed, that lets you move groups of pages.