PDF Editing

How to Rotate PDF Pages

Last updated · By the PDFSolution team

A sideways page is almost always a scanner problem: the sheet went in the wrong way, or an automatic feeder decided a landscape table should be portrait. The reader you are using can spin the view, but that setting lives in the reader — send the file on and the next person sees it sideways again.

Rotating properly means writing the rotation into the document, so every reader, printer and phone shows it the right way up.

Ready to do it now? Open the tool this guide describes.

Rotate PDF

Step by step

  1. 1

    Open Rotate PDF and add the document

    Every page is rendered as a thumbnail in your browser so you can see which ones are wrong.

  2. 2

    Pick the pages

    Rotate the entire document at once, or select only the pages that came out wrong.

  3. 3

    Turn them

    Rotate in 90-degree steps clockwise or anticlockwise. The thumbnails update as you go, so you can confirm before saving.

  4. 4

    Download the rotated file

    The rotation is stored in the PDF itself and travels with the file.

Useful tips

  • Mixed orientations in one document are normal for reports with landscape tables. Rotate the offending pages individually rather than the whole file.
  • If a page is upside down rather than sideways, apply 90 degrees twice.
  • Rotation is lossless — nothing is re-rendered, so image quality is untouched no matter how many times you do it.

Common problems

It looks right here but wrong in another reader
That happens when a reader's own view rotation is still applied. Close and reopen the downloaded file to see its true orientation.
It printed sideways anyway
Check the printer dialog's own orientation and scaling settings, which can override the document.
Only some pages rotated
A page selection was still active. Clear it and apply the rotation to all pages.

Frequently asked questions

Does rotating change quality?
No. Only a page attribute changes; the content is untouched.
Can I rotate a scanned PDF?
Yes, scanned pages rotate like any other.
Is my file uploaded?
No, rotation runs in your browser.
Can I rotate by an arbitrary angle to straighten a crooked scan?
No. PDF rotation works in 90-degree steps. A skewed scan has to be re-scanned or straightened as an image.
Will OCR still work afterwards?
Yes, and OCR is generally more accurate once the page is the right way up.

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