Split PDF into Single Pages

A common origin for this need is a multi-function scanner or fax machine set up to combine everything fed through it in one session into a single PDF, which is convenient at scan time and a problem afterwards when the batch actually contained a dozen separate invoices, receipts or forms that need to be filed or processed individually. Splitting into single pages undoes that bundling in one step, handing back one file per page rather than requiring each page to be located and extracted by hand.

Because the result downloads as a ZIP archive rather than as separate individual downloads, a fifty-page scan becomes one ZIP containing fifty files, which is easier to move, upload elsewhere, or hand off in one piece than fifty separate browser downloads would be. A browser prompting fifty individual save dialogs in a row would be a considerably worse experience than a single ZIP that any operating system can extract in one action.

Each page is saved using the original file name with a zero-padded index appended, so a fifty-page document called `statement.pdf` splits into `statement-01.pdf` through `statement-50.pdf` — the padding keeps the files in correct numeric order in a file browser that would otherwise sort `statement-10.pdf` before `statement-2.pdf` as plain text, since a plain alphabetical sort compares digit characters one at a time rather than the full number they represent.