How to Delete a PDF Page in Preview (The Detailed Guide)

If you have a Mac, it can be very easy to delete a PDF page in Preview when you're working with a multi-page document. Preview is Mac's native PDF viewing tool, and in Preview you can do some simple document editing, such as marking up a PDF document, rotating pages, or rearranging the pages within the document. However, sometimes there are some issues with using Preview on a Mac for deleting PDF pages.

In this post we'll talk about how to delete a PDF page in Preview, and discuss some common problems that you might run into, and an alternative for using Preview on Mac to work with PDFs.

Part 1. How to Delete Pages from a PDF in Preview?

Deleting pages from a PDF in Preview is fairly simple. You can follow the steps below to delete a single page within a PDF.

Step 1: Choose the PDF that you want to work with, right click, select "Open With" and open it in Preview.

Step 2: Click View, then Thumbnails so you can see a preview image of every page of the document you're working in at the left side panel.

Step 3: Select the page of the PDF that you want to delete. You can choose one single page by clicking on it, or you can choose multiple pages by pressing down on the Command button, and holding it while you click on several different pages. When you've chosen all the pages you want to delete, you can let go of the Command button.

Step 4: Once your pages are selected, you can press the Delete button on your keyboard, or go to Edit, then select Delete.

And remember, once you've deleted a PDF page in Preview, all of the annotations and markups on that page will also be deleted!

Part 2. Problems with Deleting Pages from a PDF in Preview?

Sometimes trying to delete pages from a PDF in Preview can be very frustrating because the deleting and editing options are so limited. For example, if your PDF is hundreds of pages long, you will need to scroll through all the thumbnails just to find the one page that you want to delete. There is also no option for deleting all odd pages or all even pages, so if you want to delete every other page, you will need to do that manually. This takes a lot of time if your PDF document is very long. Imagine trying to scroll through 100 pages to delete every page you need!

Preview also doesn't allow you to easily split a PDF document. To do this, you have to create a copy of the PDF, then go into both PDF documents and delete the pages you don't need in order to create two separate PDFs.

Preview also doesn't allow you to delete pages from PDFs that are password protected or have been locked for editing, and many Mac users have complained that this can be very frustrating because they don't understand why they can't just delete one page.

Part 3. How to Delete Pages from a PDF In Preview Alternative?

If you want to solve all of the problems above with deleting pages from a PDF in Preview, then the process is very simple! You can use UPDF as an alternative to Preview. UPDF allows you to delete a single page, delete all odd or even pages, or delete a specific range of PDF pages without having to manually select each PDF page.

UPDF also has many other features to help with all of your PDF needs. With UPDF, you can rotate PDF pages, replace individual PDF pages, extract information from a PDF, insert new pages, and so many more powerful features.

Click the button below to download UPDF.

Follow these simple steps for deleting pages from a PDF with UPDF:

Step 1: Download UPDF, and open the PDF you need to delete pages from. The first way to do this is by selecting a single page you want to delete, right-clicking, and selecting Delete. This is the best method for deleting a single page.

Step 2: If you need to delete more than one page, select Organize Pages from the left side menu. At the top of this page, you choose Select Pages, and pick a specific page range, all odd pages, all even pages, portrait pages, landscape pages, or all pages. Once your desired pages have been selected, you can press the Delete key on your keyboard, or select the red trash can to delete those pages.

And that's it! It's super simple to delete however many pages you need from a PDF with UPDF. UPDF also has many other features to help you with your PDFs, including editing tools, annotation tools, OCR ability, and AI-powered tools for explaining, summarizing, and generating content. You can use all of the features to help make your work and study life easier and simpler.

You can read this review of UPDF or watch this video tutorial to learn more.

Click the button below to download UPDF and customize your PDFs today!

Part 4. Why Can't I Delete PDF Pages in Preview?

The biggest reason you can't delete PDF pages in Preview is because the PDF is password-protected, or has been locked for editing. You won't be able to delete PDF pages until you can enter the password, or whoever has created the PDF removes the password protection. This can be frustrating, especially if you are trying to very quickly delete a single page in the PDF, so you will have to find a workaround in order to edit password-protected or locked PDFs.

Part 5. How to Fix Can't Delete PDF Pages in Preview?

If a PDF is password-protected and you can't delete it in Preview, then you can use UPDF to remove the password, and then directly delete the PDF pages, or you can save the PDF without the password and open it in Preview to delete the pages.

Follow the steps below to remove the password-protection from a PDF with UPDF:

Step 1: Open UPDF and open your saved, password-protected PDF. You will have to provide the required password before you proceed it has open password.

Step 2: On the right menu of UPDF, you can click on the Protect Using Password button. From those security options, you can select Remove Security.

Step 3: This will open a confirmation window. And if it has permission password, you need to enter the permission password. Then, you have to choose the Remove option and you will need to save the document as a new PDF file.

Now that you have a new PDF document without a password, you can open the new PDF in UPDF and delete whatever pages you need to, whether that's one single page, odd pages, even pages, or a specific range of pages. Or you can open the PDF in Preview and delete pages from there. This should work now since you will not have a password preventing you from making edits and changes in Preview. However, you may still run into some difficulty using Preview for deleting PDF pages because of the issues mentioned above. Because of those issues, we highly recommend using a Preview alternative, such as UPDF, for deleting PDF pages.

Final Thoughts

Now you have learned how to delete a PDF page in Preview. You just open Preview, open Thumbnail view, select the page you want to delete, and that's it! However, there are some limitations with Preview, such as not being able to edit a PDF because it's password-protected, or because you have to choose individual pages one at a time to delete, which takes a long time. Because of this, we recommend using UPDF for all of your PDF needs, including deleting PDF pages, editing, annotating, using OCR, and more.

Click the button below to download UPDF and get started.