How to rotate a PDF and switch it between landscape and portrait
You scan a document and it opens sideways. You rotate it in the viewer, it looks right, you send it… and the recipient sees it sideways again. The viewer’s rotation is not saved.
3 minute read
Why the viewer’s rotation is no use
When you rotate a PDF with your reader’s button, you are changing how you see it, not the file. It is the equivalent of tilting your head. As soon as you close or send it, it is back as it was.
For the rotation to travel with the document it has to be saved inside the file. That is what the rotate PDF tool does.
How to rotate it
Open the rotate PDF tool and drag your file in.
Choose how far: 90 degrees to straighten something sideways, 180 for upside down, 270 if it turned the other way.
Press Rotate PDF and download. Now everyone will see it rotated.
From landscape to portrait
This is what almost everyone is after when they type "change a PDF from landscape to portrait", and the answer is to rotate 90 or 270 degrees. A landscape page turned a quarter turn ends up portrait, and vice versa.
How many degrees do I need
- 90 degrees: the text reads bottom to top and you have to tilt your head left.
- 270 degrees: the text reads top to bottom and you tilt your head right.
- 180 degrees: it is upside down. Typical of scanning a sheet the wrong way round.
If you get it wrong, no harm done: run the file through the tool again with the degrees you are missing. The original is still untouched in your folder.
If only one page is crooked
That happens often when scanning a stack of paper. The practical route is to pull out the affected pages first with the split tool, rotate them, and merge everything back in the right order.