How to rotate PDF pages and save the rotated file

Step by step

1. Select your PDF. Click Select PDF file or drop a PDF onto the page. Every page appears as a thumbnail.
2. Find the pages that need turning. Scroll through the thumbnails and note which pages are sideways or upside down. Scans often mix upright and sideways pages.
3. Turn single pages. Click the rotate button under a page to turn it 90° clockwise. Click twice for an upside-down page, or three times for a page that needs a quarter turn the other way.
4. Turn many pages at once. Click Left or Right to rotate all pages. To turn only some, first set Pages to turn to landscape pages only or portrait pages only.
5. Check every page. Look at each thumbnail again before saving. If something went wrong, click Reset to put every page back the way it was.
6. Save the rotation. Click Rotate PDF. The rotation is applied in your browser, on your own device.
7. Download the rotated PDF. Click Download to save the file. If you rotated several PDFs, you get them together as a ZIP.

Viewer rotation vs. saving a rotated copy

Most PDF viewers have a rotate button, but it usually changes only the view on your screen. Close the file or send it to someone else, and the pages are sideways again.

Rotate PDF works differently: it writes the new orientation into the PDF. Once you download the file, it opens correctly wherever you or anyone else opens it, including when you print it.

Nothing is re-rendered or re-compressed. Rotating only changes the page orientation, so images keep their quality and text stays selectable.

Fixing scans and phone photos

Scanners and phone cameras often save pages sideways or upside down. A few patterns cover most cases:

• A whole document scanned in landscape: click Left or Right once.
• A scan that mixes sideways and upright pages: set Pages to turn to landscape pages only, then click Left or Right. The upright pages stay as they are.
• One upside-down page in a long contract: click the rotate button under that page twice and leave the rest alone.
• Several files with the same problem: select or drop them all. Left and Right then turn every page of every file the same way.

You can mix directions freely in one file: turn one page once, another twice, and leave the rest untouched.

When to use Organize instead

If the pages are also in the wrong order, use Organize PDF. It shows every page as a thumbnail, lets you drag pages to a new position, turn single pages with the rotate button and remove pages you don't need with the bin button.

It is the better choice for a double-sided scan in the wrong order or a stack scanned back to front, which Reverse order fixes in one click. When you only reorder and rotate pages, bookmarks, form fields and links keep working.

Tools used in this guide

• Rotate PDF
• Organize PDF

Related guides

• How to reorder pages in a PDF
• How to merge PDF files into one document
• How to convert JPG and PNG images to one PDF