Insert Blank Pages

Sometimes a PDF is complete but needs room: room for notes next to each slide, a clean break between chapters, or one extra page so the chapters start on the right-hand side when printed. Adding those pages in a word processor means rebuilding the document. Here you choose where the pages go and what they look like, and the rest of the file is left exactly as it was.

Note pages beside lecture slides

The most popular use is a study copy of a slide deck. Choose After every page and the Lined with margin style. Every slide is followed by a ruled page with a red margin line, like an exercise book. In a tablet note app (GoodNotes, Notability, Samsung Notes, OneNote) you write next to each slide; on paper you print double-sided and every slide faces its own note page.

If you prefer squares for maths and diagrams, choose Squared grid; for sketching and bullet journals, Dot grid is less intrusive.

Separators between sections

To put an empty page before each chapter of a long document, choose Before specific pages and type the first page of each chapter, for example 5, 18, 33. For regular sections, such as a set of worksheets that are each four pages long, After every N pages with N = 4 does the job in one step.

Fixing double-sided printing

Books start chapters on a right-hand page. If a document was laid out without that rule, a chapter that starts on an even page prints on the back of the previous sheet. Insert a blank page before it and everything after it shifts by one, so the chapter starts on a fresh sheet. The same trick fixes a cover that should print on its own sheet: add one blank page after page 1.

Size and orientation of the new pages

By default each inserted page copies the size of the page before it, including landscape pages, so a deck of wide slides gets wide note pages. If you need a standard size regardless, choose A4 or US Letter. Ruled lines and grids start a little more than a centimetre from the edges, so they survive the margins of most printers.

What stays the same

The pages you already have are not touched or re-saved as images. The new pages are slotted into the original document, which means:

• bookmarks in the sidebar still jump to the right places,
• links inside the document still work,
• fillable form fields stay fillable.

Before saving, the tool shows how many pages will be added and the final page count, so a typo in the page list is easy to spot.

A worked example: a workshop handout

A trainer has a 24-slide PDF and wants a printed handout with space for notes.

1. Open the PDF, choose After every page, 1 page each time, Lined at 8 mm.
2. The tool reports 24 pages will be added: 24 → 48 pages.
3. Save, then put two pages on each sheet with N-Up PDF, so every slide sits beside its note page on a single landscape sheet.

Related tasks

To remove pages instead, use Delete PDF Pages. To move pages around, including newly added ones, open the result in Organize PDF. For a folded booklet, where blank pages are added automatically, see PDF Booklet Maker.