15

I have a scanned PDF (two vertical pages on one horizonatal page). How can I split them to be single pages in Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended?

2
  • 1
    Why do you need it to happen in Acrobat?
    – Eroen
    Dec 19, 2011 at 2:00
  • 1
    I do not, it just seems to be the natural tool to use it.
    – Lukas
    Feb 26, 2012 at 10:42

6 Answers 6

17

You can use Briss to split multi-page PDFs into single page ones (or crop out whatever you want). It loads up all the pages at once and overlays them, so that you can see what portion of the page the text occupies.

1
  • 1
    Just tried it. Exactly like a tool should be. Simple, intuitive and effective.
    – Fiksdal
    Aug 5, 2016 at 19:14
5

What I do is this:

  1. Open the file in Acrobat - and be sure that the Page Thumbnails tray is open.
  2. Select the page that you want to 'split' and right-click or control-click to bring up the context menu - select 'Extract Pages'. This will extract the selected page to another Acrobat file.
  3. In the Page Thumbnails tray of the new window - drag the page thumbnail back to the Page Thumbnail tray of the original PDF document. You should now have two identical pages in your PDF.
  4. Now - crop each page for the material that you want to keep - for example - in page 1 crop away the right half of the document, in page 2 crop away the left half.
  5. Even though you can't see those cropped portions of the pages - they're still there - however - if you run OCR recognition on the document it will discard the cropped portions. (Tools...Recognize Text...In This File...)
1
  • 9
    That would work for a single page, not for the whole book.
    – Lukas
    Feb 26, 2012 at 10:46
2

Simply and works:

  1. Open file you wish to split and extract all pages as separate files into new folder (just to keep it clean). Do it by tools(on the right) -> pages -> extract;

    be sure you set it from first to last page and check "extract as separate files" (second box).
    What you have now are pdf files, each with one page.

  2. Select all of them; Copy and Paste;
    Whay you have now is 2xpdf files, but each page has its copy; named for example page-1.pdf and page-1-copy.pdf;

  3. Select all of them and merge into one file with acrobat pro; (it can take a while)
    What you have now is a pdf file opened in acrobat with doubled pages (and in correct order).

  4. Now crop pages; select only left side, select all pages (right bottom), select only odd pages (right bottom), ok.
    What you have now is a file with single odd pages, and double even.

  5. Now crop even pages; select only right side, select all pages (right bottom), select only even pages (right bottom), ok.
    Now you've done it. Congrats! :D

1

Here's one more option that worked for me, from this thread on the Adobe forums. Take a look at the second answer from Karl Heinz Kremer, who authored a handy little Action Wizard sequence/script. I downloaded the second link from his site ("Action File for Acrobat XI Pro"), and then imported into Acrobat (FWIW I did this on macOS Mojave 10.14.2, and Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 19.12.20034.328841).

The import step made me a little nervous since Adobe warns "The action has one or more steps that execute JavaScript. Do you still want to import the action?", but the .sequ file can be viewed in a text/code editor, and I was able to verify that there was no funny business going on (THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD SKIP THIS STEP THOUGH! Always review scripts/code before you run it whenever possible, or have a trusty geek do it for you if you're not a coder).

A warning that you should not ignore

After that, it was just a matter of finding the Action Wizard tool, selecting the new Split Pages action from the list, and hitting the Start button. My two page document was perfectly split into a new four page PDF, sitting right next to the original in my folder. I had to rearrange the page order, but that is a very quick fix in Preview if you're on macOS, just rearrange the thumbnails and hit save :)

Pros

  • No installing extra software!
  • Doesn't modify your original document (saves a copy in the same directory)

Cons

  • Might not work in all versions of Acrobat
  • I don't love recommending that people add scripts/macros if they don't understand them... bad security habit!
0

You can include the scanned page twice in the PDF and crop it to show only the left or right page.

1
  • Would that not double the file size? And how to do it for all the pages?
    – Lukas
    Feb 26, 2012 at 10:45
0

I know this is an old post, but I stumbled upon it while searching for the problem, and this is the solution I found for anyone searching about the same issue in the future:

Let's begin:

First, we have to do some preparation before execution.

Preparation:

Let's say double-page PDF filename is Insomnia.pdf

1) Create two new folders. (Let's say first folder name is L and the other is R). 2) Copy & Paste Insomnia.pdf into both of these folders.

That's it. Now the solution:

1) Open the L folder. 2) Open the Insomnia.pdf with Adobe Acrobat Professional. 3) Click 'Document' and then click 'Crop pages' 4) Use Left button. Move the frame to just in the middle of the two pages. 5) Under 'Page Range' click 'All'. 6) Next to 'Apply to' click 'Even and Odd Pages'. 7) Click OK. Now all the left side of each page is removed. We have a lot to do still though. 8) Click 'File', then move to 'Export', then 'Image', then 'JPEG'. 9) It will ask you to choose a filename. Make it something short, preferably three letters, such as, 'Asd'. 10) Click 'Save' and wait a few minutes until it finishes.

We haven't done yet. We are done with the L folder. Now we have to do the same with R folder. However this time, we will crop right side of each page. But the most important thing is that when you are going to export images, you have to choose the same filename, that is, Asd. This is essential. Now anyway I'm explaining R folder in detail:

1) Open the R folder. 2) Open the Insomnia.pdf with Adobe Acrobat Professional. 3) Click 'Document' and then click 'Crop pages' 4) Use Right button. Move the frame to just in the middle of the two pages. 5) Under 'Page Range' click 'All'. 6) Next to 'Apply to' click 'Even and Odd Pages'. 7) Click OK. Now all the right side of each page is removed. We have a lot to do still though. 8) Click 'File', then move to 'Export', then 'Image', then 'JPEG'. 9) It will ask you to choose a filename. Use the SAME FILENAME you chose before, Asd. 10) Click 'Save' and wait a few minutes until it finishes.

Now it is time to combine both of those images. However if you don't follow my exact steps, you might have pages that goes like 2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5 etc in the end. So do exactly as I say, don't do anything different.

1) Open R folder. Not L. 2) Select all JPEG images in the folder (Asd_Page_001, Asd_Page_002, Asd Page_003...) 3) After you selected all the JPEG images (make sure you didn't also select Insomnia.Pdf) right click one of these images and then click 'Combine supported files in Acrobat' 4) Good, don't touch anything on this screen. 5) Now go to the L folder. 6) Again, select all JPEG images, (make sure again Insomnia.Pdf is not included into selected files) 7) Now, don't right-click on an image this time, but MOVE these files onto the Adobe screen, just like you move a file to another folder, move it to 'Combine Files' screen which is already opened. 8) Now don't touch anything on screen, such as deselecting files, don't click anywhere. 9) Click 'Name' column twice. 10) Click 'Combine files', choose an output file name.

That's it. This new file will have one page per screen. But the end result might have this problem: Filesize might be too big even if the original file was small. New file might be 200 mb. But this can be easily solved. Open the new file with Adobe Acrobat Professional, click Document, click Reduce file size and click ok. This might take a few minutes but it will reduce file size a lot to put it onto your kindle, mobireader whatever.

Source: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135660

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .