Remove Pages Containing Text - Free Online Browser Tool

Delete every page that mentions a word or phrase, or keep only the pages that do. Runs in your browser.

A document built by stapling things together tends to carry pages from several sources, and the ones that are not wanted are usually the ones that mention a particular word - "draft", a project name, a client, a page number from another document. This tool searches the text of every page and either removes the pages that match or, the other way round, keeps only those that do. Several words can be given as alternatives, so a page is caught whichever of them it carries, and capitals can be made to matter when a document distinguishes "Draft" from "draft". The result is a new PDF containing the pages you kept, in their original order, with the report telling you how many matched and how many went. That count is the part worth reading: a phrase common enough to appear on every page is a phrase that will empty the document, and the tool stops rather than handing back a zero-page file. What it searches is the text layer. A scanned document has none, so nothing will match and the tool says exactly that - which is a different answer from "this document contains no such word", and worth telling apart. It runs here, in this tab; a document you are stripping of internal pages is usually one you would rather not hand to a server.

This remove pages containing text utility runs completely inside your web browser. Your document is opened locally and processed on your own device using JavaScript and WebAssembly, so your file is never uploaded to any server. There is no signup, no watermark and no limit on how many documents you can handle.

  • 100% client-side - files never leave your device
  • Instant processing, no upload wait
  • Works on desktop, tablet and mobile
  • Free forever, no account required

Common next steps: Delete Pages, Search Text in PDF, Remove Blank Pages, Split PDF.

How to Use the Remove Pages Containing Text Tool

Four steps, and the whole thing runs locally on your own device.

  1. Type the words to look for

    One phrase, or several separated by commas to catch a page with any of them. Capitalisation can be made to matter.

  2. Choose which pages to drop

    Remove every page that mentions it, or keep only the pages that do - the second is how you lift one section out of a long document.

  3. Check the count before you rely on it

    The report says how many pages matched. If that is most of the document, the phrase is too common to be a useful test and the tool will have stopped rather than emptying the file.

  4. Download

    A new PDF with the pages you kept in their original order, plus the count of what matched and what went.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did it stop instead of producing an empty file?

Because every page matched, which almost always means the phrase is too common to be useful. An empty PDF is a dead end, so the tool stops and tells you instead.

Will it match "Draft" but not "draft"?

Only if you ask it to. By default capitals are ignored, because a document that writes Draft in the header and draft in the body means the same thing to the reader; there is a setting for when it does not.

Does it work on a scanned PDF?

Not until the document has text. A scan is a picture of a page, so there is nothing to search. Run OCR PDF on it first, then every word on the page becomes findable.

Can I use it the other way to lift out a section?

Yes - switch to "keep only the pages that contain it" and point it at the heading of the section you want. The pages come out in order, ready to be its own document.

What happens to links and bookmarks in the pages that are kept?

The pages are copied whole, so what is inside them survives. Bookmarks that pointed at removed pages are not carried across, since there is no page for them to point at any more.