How to Rotate PDF Pages Permanently

Why rotating in a viewer does not stick and how to save the rotation into the PDF itself.

You open a scanned PDF, one page is sideways, you press rotate in your viewer, and next time it is sideways again. That is because viewers usually rotate only for display.

Saving the rotation

Rotate PDF writes the new orientation into the file. Choose the angle, optionally list which pages to turn, and download the corrected copy.

Which angle do I pick?

90: a quarter turn clockwise. Use when the top of the page is facing left.
180: upside down pages.
270: a quarter turn counter-clockwise. Use when the top of the page is facing right.

Rotating only some pages

Enter page numbers such as 2, 5-7. Leave the field empty to rotate everything.

Why your phone scan may come out sideways

Phone scanning apps sometimes record the page in the camera orientation. Fixing it afterwards takes seconds and does not affect image quality, since only the rotation flag changes.

After rotating

Check page numbers and order. If you plan to add numbering, do it after rotation so numbers appear at the right edge.