Rotate PDF pages the right way up
Turn a sideways scan upright, or fix the three pages that face the wrong way in an otherwise fine document. Rotation is recorded on the page — no pixel is touched.
Why scans come out sideways
Phone scanning apps often capture a page in landscape and then write it into a portrait PDF without re-orienting the content — they just rotate the whole image and hope the viewer copes. The result is a file where the page looks upright on the phone that made it and sideways in every other program. The same thing happens with faxes, photocopiers and documents assembled from several sources.
Fixing it is not a matter of redrawing the page. PDF has a per-page rotation value that every mainstream viewer applies at display time. Setting it to 90, 180 or 270 is a one-number change, which is why this operation is instant and completely lossless.
How to rotate pages here
- Add the PDFThe preview shows a tile per page, with the current rotation applied — so you can see which pages are wrong.
- Choose angle and scopePick 90°, 180° or 270°, then apply it to every page or list the pages that need help, such as
1, 3-5. - ExportThe new file carries the updated rotation. Open it in any viewer that honours PDF rotation and the pages sit the right way up.
When rotation is not enough
If a page was scanned and then baked into an image at the wrong angle, the page attribute and the picture disagree — rotating again will make it worse. That happens when the scanner wrote the pixels rotated but did not update the page. In that case, the reliable fix is to re-export the page as an image, rotate the image, and rebuild the PDF — which means pixels, and we would rather tell you than silently do it.
| Item | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Angles | 90°, 180°, 270° clockwise, added to existing rotation |
| Scope | All pages, or a list such as 1, 3-5 |
| Applied as | Page /Rotate attribute — content stream untouched |
| Quality | Unchanged by definition: no rendering step |
| Original file | Never modified; a new file is written |
FAQ
Can rotating blur the page?
No. Nothing is re-rendered, so there is no resampling. The only thing that changes is the number that tells the viewer which way to turn the page.
Why does a page still look sideways in another app?
A small number of viewers ignore page rotation. If the page looks wrong everywhere, the pixels themselves were rotated at scan time — see “When rotation is not enough” above.
Can I rotate only one page of a 90-page file?
Yes. Choose “Selected” and enter the page number. Mixed orientations inside one document are perfectly valid PDF.