How to Delete Blank Pages From a PDF (Automatically, Free)

Double-sided scanning is the usual culprit: scan a stack of one-sided letters with the scanner set to both sides, and every other page of the PDF is a blank back. Separator sheets, an empty last page and accidental extra scans add more. Here's how to remove blank pages from a PDF automatically, check you're not deleting anything you need, and stop them appearing next time.

Remove blank pages in one click

1. Open Organize Pages and drop in your PDF. Every page appears as a thumbnail.
2. If any pages look blank, a message appears at the top, like "5 pages look blank", and each of those pages gets a Looks blank label.
3. Glance at the marked pages to make sure none of them matter (see below).
4. Click Remove 5 blank pages. If one marked page should stay, delete the others one at a time with the ✕ instead.
5. Click Save PDF. The cleaned file downloads with "-organized" added to its name.

The file is processed in your browser, so nothing is uploaded. That suits scanned statements, contracts and medical letters.

What counts as blank

The detector looks for pages with almost no marks on them, compared with that page's own paper colour. In practice:

Page	Marked as blank?
Pure white page	Yes
Scanned blank back, grey paper, faint show-through from the other side	Yes
A page with only a page number in the corner	Yes
A page with just a heading or a single line of text	No
Light grey or small print	No
A photo or picture	No

Two cases deserve a second look before you remove everything:

• "This page intentionally left blank." Books, manuals and legal documents include these on purpose, often with only a small line of text. If you're keeping a document's original layout for printing or court filing, keep them.
• Pages with only a stamp, signature or handwritten note in the margin. Faint marks near the edge of a page can be too small to count. Look at any marked page that you know had something on it.

Removing blank pages by hand

If you'd rather choose yourself, ignore the button and click ✕ under each page you want gone. For a very long scan with blank pages in a regular pattern (every second page, for example), the automatic removal is much faster than clicking through hundreds of thumbnails.

Stop blank pages getting in next time

• Turn on "skip blank pages." Most document scanners and many scanning apps have a setting with that name (sometimes "blank page removal"). It drops blank backs during scanning.
• Scan one-sided documents in one-sided mode. Duplex (two-sided) scanning only makes sense when the backs have content.
• Remove separator sheets before scanning. Or leave them in, and use them as markers to find where each document starts before deleting them.

After removing blank pages

• Splitting the cleaned file into documents? Split PDF extracts page ranges, or splits into equal parts.
• Page numbers no longer run in sequence? Numbers printed on the pages themselves don't change when pages are removed. Add fresh ones with Add Page Numbers if needed.
• Still too big to send? Compress PDF shrinks scans, with a Target size option for upload limits.

If blank pages keep appearing in PDFs you create or print (rather than scan), the cause is usually somewhere else. See why a PDF has blank pages, and how to fix it.

FAQ

How do I delete blank pages from a PDF automatically? Open the file in Organize Pages. Blank pages are detected and marked, and Remove blank pages deletes them all at once. Save to download the cleaned PDF.

Is it free? Yes. No sign-up, no watermark, no page limit.

Will it delete pages that only have a little text? No. A page with a heading or one line of text isn't marked. Pages with only a page number are, so check the marked pages before removing them.

Can I undo a removal? Before saving, yes: choose a different file and start again, because your original PDF is never changed. The cleaned version is a new download.

Does removing pages reduce quality? No. The remaining pages are copied exactly as they were.