Write the turn into the file so every viewer, printer, and phone honors it
7, 1-3, 1-3, 5, odd, even, all) and apply 90° clockwise, counterclockwise, or 180° to that whole set, then download. Each press adds a quarter-turn to the pages' stored rotation — a 5-page file with "2-3, 5" turned 90° once comes out 0°, 90°, 90°, 0°, 90°. Nothing re-renders: text stays selectable, images stay sharp, and the change survives every viewer because it's written into the file, not your view of it.| Stored value | How the page displays | Typical cause |
|---|---|---|
| 0° | Upright, as authored | Normal portrait page |
| 90° | Quarter-turn clockwise | Landscape table; scan fed sideways |
| 180° | Upside down | Page fed reversed through a feeder |
| 270° | Quarter-turn counterclockwise | Three presses, or the other landscape direction |
Values accumulate: pressing 90° CW on a page already at 270° wraps to 0°. The download stores each page's final angle.
| You type | On an 8-page PDF it selects | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
all | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Whole document turned the wrong way |
odd | 1 3 5 7 | Duplex scan, fronts sideways |
even | 2 4 6 8 | Duplex scan, backs sideways |
2-5 | 2 3 4 5 | A run of landscape pages |
1-3, 7 | 1 2 3 7 | Mixed pages |
7-4 | 4 5 6 7 | Reversed ranges flip automatically |
Every page in a PDF carries a rotation value — one of 0, 90, 180, or 270 — that tells viewers how far to turn the page's content when displaying and printing it. Your PDF reader's rotate button changes a session view and discards it on close; a permanent fix writes a new value into the file itself. That's the whole trick, and it's why rotation is the safest edit in PDF-land: the content stream is never touched, so text stays selectable, images keep their exact pixels, and the file grows by a handful of bytes.
This tool renders thumbnails with pdf.js so you can see which pages are sideways, tracks each page's extra turns, and writes the final angles with pdf-lib on download. Pages you never touch keep their original stored value exactly.
A 5-page scanned contract comes in with pages 2, 3, and 5 sideways. Open it, type 2-3, 5, press ⟳ 90° CW once, and the pages' stored values go from 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 to 0, 90, 90, 0, 90. If page 3 was actually authored already rotated (stored 90) and you add another quarter-turn, it lands at 180 — one press of ⟲ on its card walks it back to 90. A duplex-scan job where every even page is sideways is the two-click case: type even, press ⟳ once, download. The math is plain modulo-360 addition, which is exactly what the exporter writes per page.
Most viewers rotate your view of the page for that session only and throw the setting away when the file closes. A permanent rotation has to change the page's stored rotation value inside the file — which is what this tool writes — so every viewer, printer, and phone honors the turn from then on.
No. Rotation is stored as a number on the page object — 0, 90, 180, or 270 — and viewers simply display the same content turned. Nothing is re-rendered, nothing is recompressed: text stays selectable, images stay pixel-identical, and file size barely moves because only a few bytes of metadata change.
Type a page spec: single pages (7), ranges (1-3), or a mix (1-3, 5), plus the shortcuts all, odd, and even for duplex scans. Each rotate press adds another quarter-turn to exactly those pages, so a page already at 90 that gets another 90 lands at 180.
Use the odd or even shortcut. Two-sided documents fed through a sheet feeder often scan one side rotated, so selecting odd (or even) and applying a single 90-degree turn fixes the whole file in two clicks — then reset and try the other parity if the first guess was wrong.
Rotation is one of the safest edits possible: the page contents, links, and form fields are untouched. Bookmarks keep pointing at the same pages. The only thing to check is landscape tables that were already rotated by the author — they may now double-turn past upright.
A viewer's File > Save after a view-rotation either discards the rotation or, in some apps, prompts to save pages — inconsistently across apps. A dedicated rotation tool writes the intended final angle for each page and hands you a clean download, which is why print shops ask for it rather than trusting viewer saves.