I pressed download and got a message that the order hasn't changed, and nothing downloaded. Why?

What the tool checks exactly

When you press “Download in new order”, the tool looks at the current sequence: is position 1 holding page 1, position 2 holding page 2, and so on to the end? If so, the output would be a copy of your file with no difference at all, so it shows the message: the page order has not changed yet, move at least one page before downloading. That saves you from sending a file you think is fixed when it is not.

Three common causes

• Moves that cancelled out: you moved page 1 one step later and then one step earlier, or dragged a page and dropped it back where it was.
• “Reverse order” twice: the first press flips the file, the second flips it back. This happens a lot when someone presses the button just to see what it does.
• “Restore original order”: this button undoes everything at once, so pressing it instead of the download button next to it puts you back at the start.

Checking the order before you press

1. In Reorder PDF pages, look at the “New order” line under the thumbnails. If it reads 1, 2, 3 all the way to the end, nothing has changed.
2. Look at the badge numbers: the badge is the new position, and the page label under the thumbnail is its number in the original. If they match on every thumbnail, the order is unchanged.
3. Move the pages you need again, then check the line once more.
4. Press “Download in new order”.

What if the file was in order all along?

Sometimes you open a file to fix it and find the order was fine, and what you saw elsewhere was a two-page spread view or something similar. Then the message is simply telling you no new file is needed, and your current file is the one to send. If the problem is page orientation rather than order, that is a job for the rotate tool, not the reorder tool.