How to Save a Page of a PDF Document on Your Mac

Have you ever been in a situation where you are reading something & want to keep only certain information for future reference? Keeping the whole document for just a single page or a piece of information seems pointless if you are not likely to read it again. One way to do this is by extracting that single page only as a separate PDF file.

What does ‘Extracting a Page’ mean?

Extracting a page from a PDF document means you are copying the desired page only, which you can later save as a new PDF document. You can either save a single page or a range of pages from the document in this way.

How to save a page of a PDF file on your Mac

For this purpose, the Preview app by Apple can be used as it is the default application on the Mac for viewing the PDF file. Otherwise, you can also use Adobe Acrobat. Let us see how to save a page of a PDF file on your Mac using both, the Preview & the Adobe Acrobat app.

If you’re using the Preview App:

This is how to save a page of a PDF. One way to do this is the Copy & Paste method where:

• You need to double-click or Control-click the PDF file you want to save a page from as it will lead the PDF file to directly open on the Preview.
• You can then either select the page you want to save as a PDF, go to the Edit option in the toolbar & then click on the Copy button or you can also press the Command + C from your keyboard.
• After this go to the File option up on the toolbar & select the New from Clipboard option or you can press the Command + N from your keyboard.

This way the selected PDF page will open in form of a new document on the clipboard, which you can later save as a separate file.

Another more direct way how to save a page of a PDF is to drag the desired page from Preview & release it on your Mac desktop. Here is how you can do it:

• Click on the View option in the toolbar segment. From there, click on the Thumbnail option.
• This will show the pages in contracted size on the left-hand side of your currently opened page.
• Or, if you are unable to spot the thumbnail button, there is a tiny dark-colored triangle mark on the left side of the page margin. You can click it to see those small-sized pages.
• Then you might want to reduce the size of the open Preview so that you can see your desktop at the same time. For this, you can click on the circular green button at the top left corner. From there select the Exit Full-Screen option.
• Now you can click on the page you want to save, hold it, & then simply drag it outside the app to the desktop.

Now you know how to save a page as a PDF file on your desktop location.

To rename this PDF page, you can Control-Click on this page and then choose the Rename option on the shortcut menu.

If you are using the (Paid version) Adobe Acrobat App:

It is quite easy how to save a page of a PDF, for which:

• You need to open the Adobe Acrobat, you can click on the Tools option on the top left side of the App & select the Organize Pages option.
• You will see the option to Select a file. Click this button as it will enable you to access the PDF file from its location.
• You can open the file from which you want to save a page of a PDF once you have found it.
• As you select the file, all the pages in that PDF file will be displayed in tiny thumbnail size on your screen. Click on the page that you want to save.

You will see four options on the Organize Pages toolbar menu above:

• ‘Delete page(s) after extracting’- you can remove that single page from your primary PDF file with this option.
• ‘Extract pages as a separate file’- if you are selecting multiple pages of the PDF file, this option will allow you to save each page as a separate new PDF file.
• ‘Extract’ blue button- to copy the selected page.
• ‘Cancel’ button.

• You can either select the 2nd or 3rd option (for a single page, both will present the same result). The extracted page will then open in a new tab.
• If you want to see how to save a page of a PDF, you can go to the File option, & select either the Save or Save As option. Later you can also rename or change the location of this file on your computer.

If you are using a free version, Adobe Acrobat does not give you the option to extract a page. But Google Chrome can help in this. This is how to save a page of a PDF from Chrome:

• You need to select the PDF file you want to work on. Control-Click on that file & press the option Open With on the shortcut menu.
• Then select the Google Chrome option that follows. This will open the PDF file on Chrome.
• On the toolbar menu above, click on the printer icon to print the document.
• This will show the print dialog box. Here, by selecting the Destination option you can then choose the Save as PDF option.
• Below it, change the setting of Pages from All to Customs. You can then enter the page number you want to save, then press the Save button below.

The above-mentioned way of dragging & releasing the page also works from Adobe Acrobat. & not only on the desktop screen but also on any other location or folder where you might want to keep the PDF page. It also automatically saves the file to that location.

Disclaimer: - Any of these steps may not work if the PDF file is not available for viewing due to some security reason(s).