16 guides · 83 min in total
How to do the job, and what quietly goes wrong.
Most PDF instructions stop at the third click. These guides carry on into the part that matters: why a merged form loses its values, why a compressed scan turns grey, and what a page range actually does to bookmarks.
Every guide is written against the tools on this site, so the steps match real controls rather than a generic interface. All of it runs in your browser — none of these procedures involves uploading a file.
Every guide
The rest of the library
- 5 min read4 steps
How to split a PDF into separate files
Splitting turns one document into many. This guide explains the three split methods, how to pick between them, and what each output does and does not inherit.
Split PDF · Extract PDF Pages
- 6 min read5 steps
How to compress a PDF
Compression is four independent levers, three of them lossy. This guide explains what each one does to your pages so you can choose deliberately rather than guess.
Compress PDF
- 6 min read5 steps
How to reduce PDF file size to meet a limit
Written for the case where a number is imposed on you — an email cap or an upload form. How to converge on a target quickly and what to do when you cannot reach it.
Reduce PDF File Size · Compress PDF for Email
- 5 min read5 steps
How to convert a PDF to JPG
Rendering a page to an image is a one-way conversion from instructions to pixels. This guide covers the DPI arithmetic and the JPG versus PNG decision.
PDF to JPG · PDF to PNG
- 5 min read5 steps
How to convert JPG images to PDF
Images go into a PDF as embedded objects on pages you define. The page-size and fit settings decide whether your photo is letterboxed, cropped or distorted.
JPG to PDF · Images to PDF
- 6 min read5 steps
How to convert a PDF to Word
A PDF has no paragraphs to convert — only positioned glyphs. This guide explains what the converter infers, where it goes wrong, and when to extract text instead.
PDF to Word · PDF to Text
- 4 min read4 steps
How to delete pages from a PDF
Deleting pages rebuilds the document from the pages you kept. Lossless for the survivors, and not the size fix people expect it to be.
Delete PDF Pages
- 4 min read4 steps
How to extract pages from a PDF
Extraction is selection: you name the pages you want and get them as one new document, or as separate files if you prefer.
Extract PDF Pages · Split PDF
- 4 min read4 steps
How to rotate PDF pages
A viewer rotation is a temporary view setting. Writing the rotation into the page is what makes every reader see it the right way up.
Rotate PDF
- 5 min read4 steps
How to sign a PDF
This site does not add electronic or cryptographic signatures. Use this guide to distinguish a visible mark from a certificate-backed signature and choose an appropriate external workflow.
- 5 min read5 steps
How to add a watermark to a PDF
Watermarking writes text into the page content. This guide covers the settings that make it legible without obscuring the document, and what it does not do.
Watermark PDF
- 7 min read5 steps
How to OCR a PDF
About the recognition itself: what the engine is doing to your pixels, what raises the error rate, and which problems are fixable before you run it.
OCR PDF
- 5 min read4 steps
How to make a PDF searchable
About the artefact rather than the recognition: what a text layer is, why the page looks identical afterwards, and how to verify the result is really searchable.
Make PDF Searchable · OCR PDF
- 6 min read4 steps
How to password protect a PDF
MyPDFilles does not encrypt or decrypt PDFs here. This guide explains real PDF encryption, weaker permission flags and the limits of local inspection so you can choose an appropriate external workflow.
- 5 min read5 steps
How to add page numbers to a PDF
Numbering is text stamped onto pages. The interesting part is making the printed number agree with what a reader expects on a document with front matter.
Add Page Numbers
How these are written
The caveats are the useful part.
Anybody can list five clicks. What actually costs people an afternoon is the thing nobody mentions: that two invoices from one template share a field name and will overwrite each other, that compressing a scan twice destroys what OCR needed, that a page range counts the pages the document declares rather than the numbers printed on them.
So each guide gives you the procedure, then keeps going into the underlying mechanism — enough that you can predict what a tool will do to your next document rather than testing it and hoping.