Frequently Asked Questions

PDFWhirl is a free online toolkit for everyday PDF tasks. It offers a small, carefully chosen set of tools — merge, compress, split, PDF to Word, Word to PDF, PDF to JPG, JPG to PDF, rotate, and a detailed OCR guide — that run entirely through your web browser. You do not need to install software, create an account, or provide any personal details to use the free tools.

Yes. Every tool on pdfwhirl.com is free for personal and professional use without hidden limits. There are no watermarks on output files, no daily caps on usage, no account requirements, and no nag screens asking you to upgrade. Advertising is displayed on some pages through Google AdSense, which is how the free service is funded, but ads never appear inside the tool workflow itself.

No. The free tier deliberately does not include accounts. You open a tool, upload your files, download the result, and go on with your day. If we add paid features in the future — for example, batch processing or API access — those features will require an account for billing, but the free tier will remain fully anonymous.

PDFWhirl is a responsive web application that runs on any modern browser: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Chromium-based derivatives. It works equally well on Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome OS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android. The site has no native mobile app; instead, the browser experience is designed to adapt to smaller screens without a feature cut.

The tools require an internet connection because processing happens on our servers. Certain reference pages — guides, FAQ, glossary entries — can be read offline if your browser has cached them, but running a tool requires an active connection. If you need fully-offline processing, pair PDFWhirl for the common tasks with a dedicated desktop application for air-gapped workflows.

Not currently. We may publish a desktop wrapper in the future if there is sufficient demand, but the web app remains our primary product. The web app is designed so that a keyboard-first, fast interaction — dragging a file into the drop zone and pressing Enter — takes fewer steps than most native workflows.

The user interface is presently published in English. We are planning additional languages and have drafted translations of key pages in several major European and Asian languages. The underlying tools are language-agnostic — they process document content, not UI strings — so even before the full translation lands, users around the world can use every tool successfully.

Yes, please. Feature suggestions sent to support@pdfwhirl.com are read by the product team and tracked in an internal backlog. We cannot promise to build every request, but requests that come in from multiple users tend to move up the list quickly. Include the specific workflow you want the feature for — the concrete use case often changes the shape of the eventual solution.

Uploaded files and their processed outputs are automatically deleted within two hours, and usually much sooner. The two-hour window is a ceiling: it accounts for users who upload a file, pause to do something else, then come back to download the result. A separate cleanup job runs every 30 minutes to catch any stragglers, and a daily sweep alerts an on-call engineer if anything in the storage bucket is older than the retention window.

No. Tools are run by automated code, not by humans. Our staff does not have a workflow that surfaces the contents of uploaded documents, and we explicitly forbid opening a user file except when a user has re-uploaded their own document through a support channel and asked us to investigate a specific issue with it. Even in that narrow case, the copy is deleted after the investigation.

Yes. Every connection is protected with TLS (minimum TLS 1.2, TLS 1.3 when the client supports it), strong cipher suites, HTTP Strict Transport Security, OCSP stapling, and Certificate Transparency. Legacy SSL and early TLS versions are refused. Internal traffic within our backend is authenticated with mutual TLS or equivalent mechanisms.

PDFWhirl is designed so that even sensitive documents spend a short time in our processing environment and are deleted automatically. That said, any file that leaves a local device involves trade-offs, so for highly confidential material — legal briefs under seal, medical records, trade secrets — you should weigh whether a fully-offline desktop tool is a better fit. The article "Is it safe to use online PDF tools" on our blog walks through how to evaluate the trade-off.

No. Uploaded documents are processed only to perform the requested operation. We do not use them to train machine-learning models, generate summaries, or build advertising profiles.

No. PDFWhirl does not sell personal data. We run advertising through Google AdSense, and where advertising cookies are considered a "share" under the California Privacy Rights Act or similar laws, you can opt out via the cookie preference control.

We maintain an incident-response runbook with defined roles and notification timelines. Where an incident triggers notification obligations — for example, under the GDPR the 72-hour rule — we aim to meet the strictest applicable deadline. Post-incident reports are written up and, when meaningful to users, published.

The current default ceiling is 100 MB per file for free tier usage. This covers the vast majority of everyday PDF tasks, including large scanned documents, illustrated reports, and multi-hundred-page books. If you run into the limit, the Compress PDF tool frequently reduces a document under the threshold while keeping text crisp.

PDF is supported by every tool that operates on documents. Conversion tools additionally accept DOCX and DOC (Microsoft Word), as well as JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and BMP image files. Output formats are typically PDF, DOCX, JPG, or ZIP depending on the tool.

Merge PDF and JPG to PDF accept multiple input files that are combined into a single output. Other tools process one file per run so you keep explicit control over each output. A future batch-processing feature is on our roadmap for power users.

Not yet. The current toolset expects unlocked input files. If your PDF is password protected, remove the protection locally first — most PDF readers can do this once you know the password. We are evaluating a password-handling flow but want to ship it in a way that does not subtly introduce additional retention of credentials.

The page count is bounded primarily by the 100 MB file-size ceiling and by browser-side memory constraints when rendering previews. Thousand-page books are well within the operational envelope; we have tested considerably larger documents without degradation.

Depending on the tool, fillable form fields and annotations are preserved where the operation allows it. Embedded JavaScript is treated with caution and, for compatibility with modern viewers, may be stripped during certain conversions. If you rely on a specific dynamic feature, run the output through your target viewer before deploying it.

Open the Merge PDF tool, drag your files into the drop zone or click to select them, arrange them in the correct order by dragging the thumbnails, and click Merge PDF. Your combined file downloads automatically once processing completes.

Yes. Merge PDF does not distinguish between scan-based and text-based PDFs — they can all live in the same output file. Keep in mind that mixed documents may have very different page dimensions; if uniform sizes matter, scale the inputs before merging.

The practical limit is the 100 MB total combined file size. Thirty or forty small PDFs will comfortably fit. If you hit the ceiling, run Compress PDF on the inputs first to reduce their size.

Bookmarks from the individual source files are preserved in the merged output. We cannot automatically construct a new top-level table of contents across the combined document, but most PDF readers will show each source's bookmark tree as a section of the combined file.

Three levels: Low (larger file, best quality), Recommended (balanced), and Maximum (smallest file, acceptable for on-screen reading). The Recommended preset works well for most documents. Use Maximum for email-size scans and Low for print-ready output.

No. Text remains sharp because it is encoded as vector data and is not touched by the image-resampling step. Only embedded images are resampled when compression is applied, and even there we aim for visible content to remain readable at the chosen quality level.

Some PDFs are already well compressed — for example, a text-only report exported from a modern word processor. In that case the tool has little room to reduce the file. If size is still a problem, consider removing images, splitting the document into sections, or exporting at a lower DPI from the source application.

No. Compression preserves the document structure, metadata, and any security flags attached to the input. If you want to strip metadata deliberately, you will need to use an editor that supports that operation.

Use the Split PDF tool. Upload your file, enter the page numbers or ranges you want (for example, "1-3, 5, 7-9") in the page ranges input, then click Split PDF. Only those pages are exported.

Yes. In the Split PDF tool, choose the option to split every page and the tool will produce a ZIP file containing one PDF per source page, numbered sequentially.

Splitting by range gives you full control — pick exactly the pages you want. Splitting every N pages is a bulk operation useful for chapter-style documents. Both modes are available in the Split PDF tool.

Text content, headings, bullet lists, and simple paragraph formatting are preserved. Complex layouts with multi-column text, floating text boxes, or custom fonts may require minor adjustments in Word. If the source PDF was originally produced from Word, the conversion often round-trips with almost no visible change.

Scanned PDFs contain images of text rather than actual characters, so a direct conversion produces a Word document whose pages are still images. To produce editable text from a scan, the file first needs Optical Character Recognition. See the OCR PDF guide for a practical walk-through.

That is common — a Word document embeds each image in its own object, which tends to cost a few extra kilobytes per image compared to a compressed PDF. If size matters, delete any images you do not need or compress them inside Word before saving.

Yes. Both modern .docx and legacy .doc files are accepted as input. Output is a standard PDF suitable for email, signing workflows, or long-term archiving.

The tool embeds the fonts available in the source file, so in most cases the PDF is visually identical to what you see in Word. If your document uses a font that is licensed in a way that forbids embedding, the tool substitutes a close match and reports the substitution.

Yes. Hyperlinks remain clickable, the table of contents is navigable, and heading hierarchy is preserved so PDF readers can render a usable outline.

PDF pages are rendered at 150 DPI by default, which produces sharp images for on-screen use, presentations, and web publishing. If you need higher-resolution output for print, let us know — a configurable DPI option is on our roadmap.

A ZIP archive with one JPG per page, numbered sequentially. You can open the archive with any standard unzip utility on your operating system.

Not through the current PDF to JPG tool. The JPG format is chosen because its smaller file size suits most on-screen use cases. A dedicated PDF to PNG export is on our roadmap.

JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and BMP are all accepted. Mixed batches work fine — you can combine photos from several sources into a single PDF.

Yes. The tool offers A4, US Letter, and "fit to image" page sizes. The fit-to-image option sets each page to match the dimensions of the corresponding input, which is useful for scrapbook-style layouts.

After you upload, drag the thumbnails to reorder. The final PDF is generated in the order you set, so you can preview and correct it before committing.

Yes. Enter individual page numbers or ranges (for example, "2, 4-6") and the tool will rotate only those pages, leaving the rest untouched.

90 degrees clockwise, 90 degrees counter-clockwise, and 180 degrees. Those three cover the practical cases that come up with sideways scans and upside-down pages.

No. The content itself is unchanged; only the page's display orientation is updated. Text remains extractable, bookmarks still point to the right pages, and the document's structure is preserved.

A dedicated OCR tool is on our roadmap. In the meantime, the OCR PDF guide on our site explains what OCR is, when it helps, and how to prepare scanned PDFs so that the eventual OCR step delivers the best results.

A clean 300 DPI scan with even lighting works best. Phone photographs can work for single-page documents if you use a document-scanner app that handles perspective correction, but multi-page forms deserve a proper scanner.

When our OCR feature launches it will support major European languages and several widely-used non-Latin scripts. Specialist content — handwritten notes, mathematical notation, very old typefaces — will remain hard regardless of provider.

Check that the file is under 100 MB, that it is not corrupted, and that your internet connection is stable. Try a different browser or a private window to rule out extensions. If the problem persists with a small, known-good file, email support@pdfwhirl.com and we will take a look.

Complex PDFs — forms, unusual fonts, multi-column layouts — sometimes show small visual differences after conversion. The text is almost always preserved; only the layout is approximated. For critical documents, always review the converted file in the target application before sharing.

Some browsers block automatic downloads when pop-ups are suppressed. Allow downloads from pdfwhirl.com in your browser settings, or click the manual download link shown after processing completes.

Error messages on PDFWhirl try to describe the cause in plain language. The most common are "file too large", "unsupported file type", and "processing timeout". If you receive an opaque error, include the error ID (shown at the bottom of the message) in your support email — that ID lets us correlate the error with the relevant log line.

Wait 60 seconds; large files can take a while to upload over slow connections. If the progress bar stops moving, refresh the page and try again. If the problem repeats with the same file, it may have an unusual structure — feel free to send a minimal example to support so we can reproduce it.

Make sure the URL begins with https://pdfwhirl.com. The site is always served over HTTPS; a plain-HTTP warning means the connection is being intercepted somewhere, and you should investigate your network rather than proceed. If the warning appears even on a trusted network, contact support.

The free service is currently funded by Google AdSense. Ads appear on some pages outside the tool workflow. They never read the contents of your uploaded files and they do not run inside the processing surface itself.

Advertising personalisation can be turned off through your Google Ad Settings and through the cookie preference control on the site. We do not currently offer an ad-free paid tier; if one is introduced, it will be clearly labelled on the pricing page.

We are exploring optional paid tiers that would add batch processing, larger file-size limits, API access, and OCR. None of these features would remove anything from the free tier; they would sit alongside it.