Rotate PDF pages

Rotation that stays put

Plenty of programs only rotate the view. Adobe Acrobat Reader's Rotate View, for example, turns the page on your screen, and the next time the file opens it is sideways again. That is why “rotate a PDF and save it” is such a common search.

Octoolo changes each page's rotation setting inside the file you save. Only that setting changes; the page's content is not redrawn. Text stays crisp, selectable and searchable, and scanned pages keep their resolution. It works the same way on a one-page letter as on a 300-page scan.

When turning is all you do, without moving or removing pages, Octoolo starts the saved copy from the original file and changes nothing but the turns. Its fillable form, its links and its bookmarks are all still there.

Which way to turn

Not sure which way a page is lying? Read the first line of text on its thumbnail: the direction it runs tells you the button. Pressed the wrong one? Press the other, or Ctrl Z.

A page that was stored upright but printed landscape becomes a wide page once turned, which is how a wide table, a chart or a floor plan should read on screen. Mixed documents are fine: a portrait report can keep one landscape page, and readers show each page its own way. The page bar always shows each page as it will be saved.

Where sideways pages come from

• Scanners and phone scan apps that guess the orientation wrong, often on pages with little text.
• Landscape pages inside a portrait document, such as a wide table, stored the other way round.
• Two-sided scans that bring every back page in upside down.
• Merged files from sources that did not agree on which way is up.
• Photos of documents taken with the phone held sideways.

For an upside-down stack, Ctrl-click every page that needs it and press Turn right twice: the whole lot is fixed at once. Pages out of order can be rearranged in the same session and blank backs deleted, though moving or removing pages means the file is saved as a new PDF of copied pages.

Everything else follows the turn

Turn pages before you add anything to them. Text you type, a signature or a highlight is placed on the page as it reads on screen, so an upright page is the easy way to write on it the right way round.

The Document panel follows the turn too. Page numbers land at the bottom of each page as it now reads, and a watermark is centered on the turned page. Pictures saved with PDF to JPG come out turned as well.

Pages made from photos turn the same way as PDF pages. A phone picture that opened sideways in a JPG to PDF job needs one press of Turn left or Turn right before you save, and the turn is kept in the file without touching the photo itself. Blank pages from Add a blank page are upright A4 and turn like any other, which is a quick way to get a landscape page for notes.