Splitting a 400-page report into chapters without rebuilding the bookmarks
Split-by-range vs. split-each — when to use which, and how Evixpdf keeps your bookmarks aligned.
Annual reports, study handbooks, technical manuals — sometimes a stakeholder only needs chapter 7. Splitting the right way preserves the bookmarks and metadata they care about.
Ready to try this yourself?
Open Split PDF in a new tab and read the rest while you upload.
The Split tool has two modes that look similar from the outside. Picking the wrong one means either too many files or files that span the wrong pages. Two minutes of thinking up front saves a half-hour of re-doing.
"Split each page" vs. "Split by range"
Split each page is for chopping a multi-page invoice batch into one PDF per invoice when every invoice happens to be a single page. Quick, but it produces N files where N = page count. Don't use it on a 400-page report unless you genuinely want 400 files.
Split by range is for cherry-picking. Pages 12-47 become one PDF, 48-91 become another, and so on. You can write multiple ranges separated by `|` and get one output per range. This is what you want for chapters.
After the split
Each output file keeps the bookmarks that fall inside its range, so a chapter PDF still navigates correctly. The cover and TOC stay with whatever range you put them in (usually the first range, pages 1-11).
Bonus: rename each output with the chapter title before sending. <report>-ch07-fieldwork.pdf is much more useful than split-3.pdf when someone forwards it.