Pages end up in the wrong order more often than people expect: a scanner feeds sheets backwards, a chapter gets inserted in the middle, or two documents are merged in the wrong sequence. PDF Arranger fixes all of these visually — you drag page thumbnails into place and export, with no need to rebuild the document.
This guide covers the four reordering tools you will actually use: drag and drop, moving pages between two open PDF Arranger windows, reversing the page order in one action, and swapping odd and even pages, the classic fix for double-sided scans.
Before you start
You need PDF Arranger 1.14.0 (or a recent version) installed. If it is not on your computer yet, download PDF Arranger first — it is free, open source (GPL-3.0), and works entirely offline, so your files never leave your computer.
Nothing you do in PDF Arranger changes the original file on disk. Every edit only takes effect when you export the result to a new PDF, which makes experimenting safe: if the output is not what you wanted, adjust the arrangement and export again.
Step by step: drag pages into order
- Open the PDF and, if needed, zoom out so you can see many thumbnails at once.
- Select the page or pages to move. Click one page, or select several pages that belong together.
- Drag the selection to its new position in the thumbnail grid and drop it. The remaining pages shift to make room.
- Alternatively, cut and paste. Copy the selected pages, click where they should go, and paste them there — useful for precise placement in a long document.
- Export the rearranged document as a new PDF once the order looks right.
Moving pages between two windows
You can run two PDF Arranger windows side by side and move or copy pages between them. Open the source document in one window and the destination in the other, then copy pages from the first and paste them into the second. This is the cleanest way to build a new document out of pages taken from several existing ones.
Reverse order and swap odd/even pages
Two built-in actions handle scanner mishaps. Reverse order flips the selected pages (or the whole document) back to front — exactly what you need when a stack was scanned from the last page to the first. Swap odd/even pages, strengthened in version 1.14.0, exchanges each odd page with the following even page, which repairs documents whose front and back sides were interleaved in the wrong sequence after duplex scanning.
Tips
- Use Undo if a drag lands in the wrong place; it is faster than dragging the pages back by hand.
- For long documents, reorder in small verified chunks rather than one giant drag, and export a test file before closing the original arrangement.
Which method for which mess?
It helps to match the tool to the problem. A few pages in the wrong place call for a simple drag. A whole document scanned back to front calls for Reverse order — one action instead of sixty drags. A duplex scan whose sheets came out front-back-front-back in the wrong pairing calls for Swap odd/even pages. And a document assembled from several sources calls for the two-window workflow, where each source stays open and untouched while you copy the pages you need into the destination. Choosing the right method is the difference between a two-minute fix and an afternoon of dragging thumbnails, so look at the pattern of the disorder before you start moving pages.
Related guides
Keep going with these step-by-step guides from the same series: