Extracting PDF pages without adding printer.

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Level 1

4 points

Extracting PDF pages without adding printer.

I need to extract specific pages (ex: 1, 4-6, 10) from PDF document and save them as new PDF document on macOS Monterey. It's very easy to do so in Windows with "Microsoft Print to PDF" feature.

In order to achieve the same exact thing on macOS - one must suffer.

"Preview" or "Adobe Reader" won't allow to get to "Save as PDF" feature without adding a printer first. I found a workaround to add a dummy printer in a thread that is 11 years old since I don't have a physical one. Spent around an hour figuring that out.
In addition "Preview" has no dialog box to specify pages I need. Took a while to figure out that I have to pre-select pages in Thumbnails pan on the left side.

Shouldn't there be an easier way to accomplish such a trivial task? At least after 11 years, not having to add a printer would be nice.

Posted on Jan 3, 2022 12:30 PM

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Answer 1

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6x6

Level 6

19,251 points

Jan 3, 2022 12:46 PM in response to nuryupin

You can actually achieve what you are seeking without a printer. In Preview, first select the pages you would like to extract, then click Preview > File > Print and choose Save as PDF. In the screenshot below, I selected 4 random pages from a large PDF and extracted them successfully as a new PDF:

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