Guides
Last updated 6 November 2026
Most “how to merge a PDF” pages are the same six sentences with a different heading. These are not those. Each guide starts from a job that actually goes wrong — a 300-page scan that freezes the tab, a merge that loses every bookmark, a “compressed” file that prints worse — and explains what the tool does to the bytes, what it cannot do, and how to tell the difference in the result.
Every guide is written after running the tool on real files, and every number in one is either measured on the hardware named in the text or explicitly labelled as arithmetic. When a figure depends on your device, the guide gives you the method to get your own answer instead of a confident number that would not apply to you.
How to read them
- Guides are grouped by the kind of job: organising pages, converting formats, preparing a file for print, and how local processing behaves.
- Each one ends with the tools it refers to, so you can go from the explanation to the tool without a search.
- Publication and update dates are on every article. If a page has not been touched since the interface changed, that is a bug — tell us.
Where to start
If you recognise the symptom but not the tool, this table is the short version. Each row names the failure, the guide that explains it, and the tool that fixes it — no search box, no second page.
| What you are seeing | The guide that explains it | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| The merged file lost its bookmarks, links and form fields | Merging PDFs without losing bookmarks | Merge PDF, Organise PDF |
| A long scan freezes the tab or dies at 99% | Browser memory limits for PDF | Split PDF, Compress PDF |
| “Compression” saved 8% and the text now looks soft | Why compression barely shrinks a scan | Compress PDF |
| The print proof came back cropped, scaled or with a white margin | Print-ready PDF checklist | Crop PDF, Compress PDF |
| One page has to go, five have to come out, a section has to move | Delete, extract, reorder: which tool | Delete pages, Extract pages, Organise PDF |
| A signature has to land on the line today, without a printer | Signing a PDF without a printer | Sign / Edit PDF |
| Photos have to become one PDF under an attachment limit | Images to PDF: DPI and size | Image to PDF |
| A deck needs pages as images, for slides or a website | PDF to image: choosing a DPI | PDF to Image |
What you will not find here
No “15 best PDF tools of the year” list, no walkthrough for software you have to install first, and no promise that any of this rescues a file that is already broken beyond its page structure — a PDF with a corrupt cross-reference table has to be repaired before it can be split. We also do not write about operations our tools do not perform: optical character recognition, removing a password, redaction that really destroys the pixels underneath, and conversion to Word. Pointing those jobs at a page that cannot do them would waste your afternoon and our credibility.
What is here is narrower and, we think, more useful: nine jobs that people genuinely get wrong, explained down to what happens to the bytes, with a way to check the result yourself in under a minute. Where a guide cannot measure something on your hardware, it says so and hands you the method instead of a confident number that would not have applied to you anyway.
Organise pages
Merging PDFs without losing bookmarks, links or page size
A merge copies pages, not the document around them. What survives the page copy, what silently disappears, and how to check your finished file in under a minute.
6 November 2026 · 7 min readOrganise pagesSplitting a 300-page PDF into chapters without re-compressing it
A split copies pages into new documents, so nothing is re-encoded — but the total size grows, the outline disappears and the printed page numbers stop matching. How to cut a long file so each part is usable on its own.
6 November 2026 · 6 min readOrganise pagesDelete, extract or reorder: picking the right page-surgery tool
Four tools do almost the same thing and one of them is always the right one. A decision table for page surgery, why the page numbers shift under you, and the check that catches a wrong deletion before you send the file.
6 November 2026 · 6 min readOrganise pagesSigning a PDF without a printer — and what your signature really is afterwards
Print, sign, scan is a three-step tax on one page. Here is the local-only way to put your signature on a PDF, why the result is a picture rather than a digital signature, and how to size it so it looks like you signed it.
6 November 2026 · 6 min readConvert and compress
Why “compress PDF” barely shrinks your file — and what actually does
Most PDFs are already compressed, so a lossless pass saves a few percent. The lever that works is pixels: DPI, JPEG quality and colour. What each level of the tool really does, with the arithmetic behind it.
6 November 2026 · 6 min readConvert and compressImages to PDF: DPI, page size and the 2 MB email limit
An image has no DPI until you place it on a page. The one formula that predicts whether your photos will look sharp when printed, how page size and fit change the answer, and how to hit an attachment limit without guessing.
6 November 2026 · 6 min readConvert and compressPDF to image: how much DPI you actually need, and which format to pick
A PDF page is resolution-free until you turn it into pixels. What 72, 150 and 300 DPI mean in pixels for A4, why a text page should be PNG and a photo should be JPEG, and when WebP saves you a third of the bytes.
6 November 2026 · 6 min read