I scanned a 15 page document using NOTEs on my iPhone, I cannot export all pages to a PDF (only one page of the notes file is made into a PDF)

i used my iphone XS Max running latest iOS, cannot export all pages to PDF on the phone. I also tried on my macbook air m1, and the 15 page note is visible, but when I try to export to PDF, only one page exports (the first) or whatever thumbnail I have selected. I exported the notes and tried using pages, and the same thing happens when I try and export to PDF. This happens with export function and when I try to print and select PDF.


I'm not able to find an answer on the support pages


Posted on Oct 21, 2023 4:52 PM

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8 replies

Oct 22, 2023 1:48 AM in response to Cheesy99

I don't have multi-page notes. On iOS 17.0.3, one can Share a note as Send a Copy and one of the default choices is Open in Pages (provided one has Pages v13.2 for iOS installed). This is for a text content, one-page Note. What happens when you follow that procedure with your 15-page Note?


One can also share Notes between iOS and macOS by enabling Notes on iCloud Drive via System Preferences/Settings on macOS.


Unlike MS Word v16.31 and later, Pages cannot open and convert any PDF document. You can drag/drop a PDF onto an open Pages document but only the first page of that PDF document object is available.

Oct 22, 2023 5:07 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hey Viking - appreciate your response. I am on iOS 17.0.3 and have the latest Pages on both my iOS device and on my Macbook Air M1 running Sonoma 14.0. I am sharing notes (and everything else available to share on iCloud between my two devices


(this functionality is awesome for all apps and content, but this PDF scan problem I'm having is one of my nits/nats frustrations with Apple specific to my Mac after recently moving from Windows).


On my Macbook Air, I first used the "Send a Copy" to open the Note file with the 15 page scan, and the Notes file imported just fine into pages, with all 15 pages of the scan. When I used the export and export/send (as PDF) function in pages on the Mac, it creates a PDF again with only the first page of the scan. I took your suggestion and tried both on my iOS device, and had the same result, only page one of the scan.


As for your last statement, I don't have any original PDF to create in pages, but only the first page of the PDF dropped into Pages is available (if it was a multi page PDF)? I don't have that use case need, but it sure sound similar (related?) to my issue with my 15 page scan to PDF problem.



Oct 22, 2023 5:56 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hey Viking, I did use the File Export > PDF, and it only created a PDF with one page. Sorry if that wasn't clear.


I have MS Word and Excel on my Macbook. I just rescanned all 15 pages into a Word document using my iPhone to scan (right click, scan documents) - scanned each page page, saved, then scanned all 15 in the same manner. I saved the Word file as a .docx, then saved as a PDF. All 15 pages converted from the Word file to the PDF file.


So I'm covered with this workaround for the PDF doc with the scanned pages I needed, and when time permits I may try again with multi page scans into Notes AND separately into Pages, just to see if I can figure out the problem. It may be the way I scanned the documents originally into Notes, but I've used this function before and it's worked for me with three page scans -> PDF so not sure.


Thanks again for your responses, from a fellow scandinavian.

Oct 22, 2023 5:14 PM in response to Cheesy99

Scan-to-PDF in Notes on iOS 17 is profoundly broken. It's now essentially impossible to correctly export a multi-page PDF. If you do manage to do so by using macOS to "export" the document, it will revert to looking like a photograph. If you scan in landscape orientation, only the first page of the scan is rotated correctly. The first page is also visually smaller than subsequent pages.


It's a major regression of a feature that I used almost daily. My fear is that this broken feature will be ignored for months as is often the case with iOS / macOS regressions.

I scanned a 15 page document using NOTEs on my iPhone, I cannot export all pages to a PDF (only one page of the notes file is made into a PDF)

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