Home / Deleting PDF pages?

Could you add ability to delete page/pages in pdf ?

Generally the answer to can a viewer do editing function such as rotate or split/merge etc.has been NO see

What is currrently possible is to send the page number (%p) via ExternalViewer command to call another app to delete (or rotate) that page etc.

There are several free lightweight apps that may do that via the command line and if the file is not locked then you can see the result instantly in SumatraPDF.

The choice of app can be difficult as many may have poor reputation or limitations.
Some better ones don’t have “delete page” as it tends to screw up page order and linking even if they do allow adding in a blank page !

Untested since it adds extra pages is the demo version of
win2pdfd.exe deletepages “sourcefile” startpage endpage "destfile"
that could be tested where startpage and endpage are both current page (%p) but setting destfile to sourcefile could be a problem for larger files

Paid ones tend to be easier for usage like
PdfTron pagemaster -r “for page removal.pdf”,%p

PDFill is more complicated but might be free to use if setup correctly

Many times removing a page without a full editor to heal any new rifts is likely to degrade the original structure. It is generally only simple files such as scan images pdf where you just need to change all the following page numbers that might prove easy to change.

As an example here I am deleting page 5 of 7 from copy of PDFtron License

Now the bookmarks can not work as that page 5 is no longer there, it jumps back to previous bookmarked page 2 the operation was a sucess but the bookmarks died.

Thank you for this explanation how to use external tool.

But that answer about deleting pages is from 2017. Maybe now in 2020/2021 will be available new open source libraries to make this possible.

In theory there is
mutools

PDFDocument#deletePage(number)
Delete the numbered page.

but as I have found other apps have problems with non simple cases
many will simply remove ALL bookmarks and links to avoid having to rewrite the entire structure.
Think of it as like cutting a foot out of the branch you are currently sitting on.
It needs props on both sides or else you colapse.

The question is not one of implementation because I’m sure the dev will have no problems in adding this feature if he wishes to. The point is, since he intends for Sumatra to be a simple lightweight viewer with extremely limited editing features (mostly annotations-related), it’s unlikely you’ll see this implemented anytime soon, if ever.

There was a recent related issue on GitHub that I’m sure @kjk is likely to close as well: