How do I remove blank pages from a scanned PDF?
Open the file in a page organiser, delete the blank pages, and export. The result is a rebuilt file containing only the pages you kept — not a file with pages hidden. Check for a signature or exhibit page before you delete anything that looks empty.
Why the blanks are there
A duplex scanner photographs both sides of every sheet. When a section ends on a right-hand page, the back of it is blank but still scanned.
The same happens with divider sheets, and with pages whose content fell below the scanner's threshold — a faint stamp can disappear and leave what looks like a blank page.
Remove them
- Open the file and step through it at page-thumbnail size. The blanks are obvious at that scale.
- Mark the blank pages for deletion. Read the surrounding pages as you go — a signature page often looks empty until you look closely.
- Export. The new file contains only the kept pages.
- Check the page count against the index or table of contents. Renumber if the document has printed numbers.
The trap: a page that is empty and signed
Signature pages are frequently sparse: a name, a date and a lot of white space. At thumbnail size they look like the blanks you are removing.
Before you delete a run of pages, open each one at full size. If a document quotes "page 12 of 14" anywhere, that is the check.
Where this stops
This removes pages, not content. It cannot detect which pages are blank for you — a very faint scan and an empty one look the same to a program, and guessing wrong removes a real page.
If the document already carries page numbers, deleting pages leaves gaps in the numbering. Renumbering afterwards is a separate step.
Is the deleted page really gone?
Yes. The organiser builds a new file from the pages you keep, so the removed page is not present in the output.
Does it shrink the file size?
A little, by the size of the removed pages. It is not a compression tool, so a file made of dense scans stays large.
Can I undo it?
Not in the output file — the originals on your device are untouched, so re-run the tool on the original if you removed the wrong page.
This page is general information, not advice for your document. The tools do what they say on their own pages, and every limit is printed there.