Practical PDF guides
Short, specific explanations written to support the tools on this site. Each guide answers a question people actually run into — why a file won't shrink, what "scanned" really means, how to share only the pages someone needs — and links to the tool that does the job.
Task guides
Step-by-step help for the jobs people do most often.
How to Reduce PDF File Size Without Unnecessarily Losing Quality
Work out what makes your file big, then shrink it in the order that loses the least quality.
Read guide →Task guide · MergeHow to Merge Multiple PDF Files
Plan the order, trim each source, merge, then check — a workflow for tidy combined documents.
Read guide →Task guide · SplitHow to Split a PDF Into Separate Documents
Plan ranges, avoid the printed-page-number trap, and split bundles or oversized files cleanly.
Read guide →Task guide · ExtractHow to Extract Specific Pages From a PDF
Share only the pages someone needs — and use extraction to fix page order too.
Read guide →Task guide · ConvertHow to Convert JPG Images Into a PDF
From phone photos to a tidy PDF: capture, crop, order, page size and size control.
Read guide →Understanding PDFs
Background that explains why tools behave the way they do.
Why Some PDFs Are Difficult to Compress
Already-compressed images, text-only files and fonts — the reasons a PDF refuses to shrink.
Read guide →Understanding PDFsScanned PDFs vs Text-Based PDFs: What's the Difference?
How to tell them apart in five seconds — and why it changes which tool and setting you should use.
Read guide →Understanding PDFs · PrivacyHow Browser-Based PDF Processing Works
What happens when you choose a file, what runs on your device, and the honest limits of local processing.
Read guide →Safety & troubleshooting
Working carefully with important files, and fixing things when they go wrong.
How to Handle Sensitive Documents When Using PDF Tools
Share only what's needed, understand redaction vs deletion, and tidy up copies afterwards.
Read guide →TroubleshootingCommon PDF Processing Problems and How to Troubleshoot Them
Won't load, got bigger, pages sideways, tab crashed — causes and fixes in one place.
Read guide →Looking for a tool rather than an explanation? Use the tool chooser on the homepage — it maps common tasks to the right tool in one line each.