Splitting a landscape spread into 2 portrait pages?

[MacEachaidh]

I have a series of PDFs that I've been asked to modify.  Unfortunately, I don't have access to the original document, or I'd make a new PDF.

Typically, these PDFs have several pages where two facing portrait pages have been rendered as a single landscape spread;  I need to split those spreads into separate portrait pages in the PDF.

I'm using Acrobat X on Windows 7 x64.  Fortunately, the existing PDFs are fairly high resolution.

My immediate thought is to take the pages I need to split into Photoshop, save them out as separate pages, and then construct a new PDF.

Or ... is there a better way to do this?

[AdityaKalania]

Try using Crop function and see if this suits your requirement.

Tools Pane - pages - Crop

Or you can export the PDF to Word doc, and make changes in the word file.

File - Save as - Microsoft Word - Word document

[MacEachaidh]

Hmm, I appreciate the rply, but neither of those really answers the brief, do they?

I'm aware of the crop function, but doesn't that just discard the parts that are cropped?  I need to turn the spread into two single pages, not only save half of it.

And exporting it to a word processir file loses the formatting and layout.

[AdityaKalania]

I am afraid but spreading one landscape page into two single portrait pages is not possible.

That's why I gave you other alternative.

You can crop the PDF twice, first get the right side, and then get the second side, and arrange the pages in the document.

This is obviously, time consuming process, but this is one of the workaround that I can suggest you.

[rubenalv]

You might want to try Abbyy Fineprint. It splits landscape into portrait automatically. Of course, you'll have to re-OCR the document, but if the results are acceptable, you're good to go. I just did one myself, worked fine.

[DSF1]

Workaround (time consuming but it works):

1) extract the page(s) to split.  This creates a copy in a different window.

2) crop the copy to be one part of your split page

3) crop the original to be the other part of your split

4) drag the thumbnail from the extract back to the original windows

[Bill12]

If the document is tagged, saving as a DOCX or DOC file may be the fastest way to get what you want. However, as a PDF you can also use the crop tool and do what is not generally recommended. That is crop the left side and print to a new PDF in portrait with expand to page. Repeat the proces for the right side (you can do a ctrl-Z to uncrop usually). When the two PDFs are complete, then use Insert Pages to put one into the other. Then use the PAGES button (maybe expanding the Pages view) to reorder the pages. Some users have developed some JavaScript to do what you want, but you will have to either search for it or wait until they drop by. I am not sure if Quite Imposing (http://www.adobe.com/products/plugins/acrobat/quiteimpose.html) has this option.

[Allta Media]

You might see if the script mentioned in the blog post Splitting PDF Pages by Karl Heinz Kremer can help you.

[aarone46849075 · Accepted solution]

I was looking for an easy answer for this myself, and didn't like the options given here. 

So I made my own:

1. Create a duplicate file

2. In original file, open "Organize Pages"

3. Click "Insert," select "from file"

4. Select the duplicate file, insert "after"

5. Place the pages into their correct orders, such that you have two in a row for each page (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3,...)

6. Go to "Edit"

7. Select "Crop"

8. On first page, select the left hand side of the image, double click on selection

9. Set page range to "All," and "apply to" to "odd pages"

10. Go to second page, which shouldn't be cropped, select the right hand side of the page, double click

11.  Set page range to "All," and "apply to" to "even pages"

Step 5 is potentially time consuming if you have a many paged pdf, but otherwise this is pretty easy,

[JupePrichards]

Agree after much searching this seems the only way... Well documented! Ta.!

[ClaudioWed]

Pretty much the best option I have found so far. Thank you for the detailed instructions. 

[try67]

If you want to do it with a single click consider this (paid-for) tool I've created that does just that:

http://try67.blogspot.com/2009/09/split-pages-in-2-parts-and-combine-to.html

[stever89154387]

Excellent.

I just bought a new carbon monoxide detector. The instructions were printed in something like 5 pt. Compressed. And my eyes are not what they were.

So I downloaded the PDF of the instructions and used your technique to split the pages (vertically rather than horizontally, but same principle) and then printed out the resulting document on A3 paper, using the "Fit" option in the print dialog to expand the pages to, er, fit.

I can now install my carbon monoxide detector correctly, so your trick may have saved my life. And that of my wife, my daughter, a cat, three guinea pigs and a rabbit 😄

OK, I may be exaggerating just a touch here, but thanks for the tip!

[defaulti0pil4yg07yi]

This helped me out! Thanks.

I found a bit shorter way to do this. You can Copy-Paste the pages in Acrobat instead of duplicate a file and import it. Nevertheless, this was a brilliant solution!

[globqueen]

Great result! And you taught me something new. Thank you!

[Hoppity]

I think you’ll find there’s a less manually intensive way. I’m assuming that you have something like a book/booklet which has been scanned as spreads with two facing pages per Acrobat page and you want single pages in order. I realize this looks like a lot of instructions but it’s actually very straightforward and, believe me, it’s nothing compared to trying to manually re-arrange pages.

1. Create two copies of the file
2. Working with the first copy go to Tools/Edit and select a spread – doesn’t matter which.
3. In the menu above the page select Crop Pages.
4. Draw a crop box around the RIGHT-HAND half of the spread.
5. When you have completed the crop box double-click inside it and in the dialogue which appears select Page range: All and Apply to: ODD PAGES ONLY.
6. Now do the opposite to the even pages. Select a spread, crop to the left-hand half of the spread, double click in the box to select the whole page range but Apply to:EVEN PAGES ONLY.
7. You should now have the first part of the booklet in single page order.
8. Save that file!
9. Open up the second copy of the original and go to Tools/Organize pages.
10. Select all pages and choose Extract in the top menu and check the box to save as separate pages.
11. You now have on disk a bunch of numbered files each of which represents an individual spread and you can close the file from which you extracted them.
12. On the File menu choose ‘Create/Combine files into a single PDF’ and select all of the individual spread files you just made.
13. The files will be imported in name order and you’ll be presented with a list to approve but DON’T press Combine yet.
14. BEFORE you click on Combine, check that the numbered files are in descending order. If not click at the top of the file name column to reverse the order.
15. Now you can press Combine to create a binder that has all the spreads in your booklet in reverse order.
16. The rest is just the opposite of what you did with the first half. Delete the left-hand half of all the even-numbered spreads, and the right-hand half of all the odd numbered spreads.
17. You should be left with the second half of your booklet in single page order.
18. Open the file containing the first half, then copy all the pages in the binder and paste them on the end. You have the complete booklet in single page order.

[Guest]

There's a great method, very well described here: adobe acrobat - How can I split in half a double-page scanned PDF in a single pass? - Super User  where you can split pages in two. Hopefully this can help 🙂

[Polokus]

This should be waaay higher up, was done with a 300 page file in 2 minutes.

[elizabeth79845834]

This is an *incredibly* convoluted procedure to do somehting that should be a simple, built-in feature!

[a1231111111]

If you are using CC and have indesign I split them there, as no manual cropping is necessary.

1. Create a spread in Indesign 

2. Under your pages pallet select the option (hamburger) drop down and allow shuffle pages.

You can then drag the second page in your spread next to the first. By default a spread starts as a single page for the cover and last page.

3. Then click file>Place and tick show import option so you can select individual pages in your pdf.

4. Select first page and place. I generally then duplicate and place second page and so on. Each placed image should be the size of the spread.

5 Export as PDF single pages.

6. You will most likely have your back page as your first page so when finished just swap the pages into correct order in Acrobat or your pdf viewer.

[Christina27397411c2rl]

For the benefit of later readers.

This is much less hassle than some of the solutions here (including the one marked as "correct answer"). I have a PC--I don't know if this works on Mac, but I'm sure you'll find out quickly. I'm writing the instructions with the assumption whoever is doing this is familiar with the basic tools for editing PDFs using Acrobat.

1. In the organise pages tool, select all pages and extract them as separate files. Save them to a folder--they'll be numbered in order.

3. Open the folder, select all files you just created, then copy and paste them into the same folder (ctrl+a ctrl+c ctrl+v) You'll end up with a list of files something like this:

book 1 - Copy.pdf

book 1.pdf

book 2 - Copy.pdf

book 2.pdf

book 3 - Copy.pdf

etc.

4. Use Acrobat to combine all these files into a single PDF. You'll now have a PDF with every page duplicated, but the duplicate page comes immediately after the original page.

5. Crop all odd pages to the left-hand page and all even pages to the right-hand page.

6. Save--you're done.

[JR Boulay · Accepted solution]

You can use this free Action for Acrobat Pro:

www.abracadabrapdf.net/parking/AcroUsers/Split%20boards%20into%20pages.zip

[Isiah221942961n3y]

JR You are a genius!  It totally worked perfect.  Split each page in half and put in the correct order, all within seconds.  Thank you!

[Natalia H.]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! It worked like a charm! 

[dianef30712845]

That did it!  No Third Party Software needed.  I'm surprised Adobe doesn't incorporate this functionality as a regular tool.  Thank you!