How to Rotate a PDF and Save It

A scanned PDF opens sideways. Rotating it in a viewer fixes it only until you close the file. These steps rotate the pages and save the change into the PDF.

Select the pages in Preview on Mac

Open the PDF in Preview and choose View, Thumbnails. Click one page in the sidebar, or press Cmd + A to select every page. Cmd-click to pick several individual pages.

Rotate and save

Choose Tools, Rotate Left or Tools, Rotate Right. Cmd + L and Cmd + R do the same, and the rotate button in the toolbar rotates right. Then choose File, Save or press Cmd + S. The rotation is now part of the file, and it opens correctly everywhere.

Rotate on iPhone

Open the PDF in the Files app. Tap the page thumbnail button at the top left to show the page sidebar. Touch and hold the page, then tap Rotate Left or Rotate Right. Files saves the change to the PDF automatically. Repeat for other pages, or touch and hold after selecting several.

Rotate and reprint in Edge on Windows

Windows 11 has no built-in PDF editor, but Edge can save the rotation. Open the PDF in Edge and click the Rotate button in the toolbar until the page is upright. Press Ctrl + P, choose Microsoft Print to PDF, click Print, and give the file a new name. Chrome's rotate button changes the view only, and its print output ignores it.

Use Acrobat online if you have many pages

Adobe's free Rotate PDF tool at adobe.com lets you rotate individual pages or the whole file and download the saved result. Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows rotates the view only, so it cannot save the change without a paid Acrobat Pro subscription.

Rotation in a viewer is temporary. If you rotated in Reader, Chrome, or a browser tab and the file is sideways again, the change was never saved. Use one of the methods above that ends with a save or a new file.

Privacy. Online rotate tools upload the PDF to a server. Use Preview, Files, or Edge for anything sensitive.