My page is lying on its side. Do I press Right 90 or Left 90 to stand it up?

The rule in one sentence

You want the top of the page back at the top. So find the current 'top': the page heading, the logo, or the header row of a table. Then ask which turn brings it up by the shortest route.

• The top of the page points left: turn it clockwise, which is 'Right 90°'.
• The top of the page points right: turn it counter-clockwise, which is 'Left 90°'.
• The top of the page points down: it is upside down, not sideways, so press '180°'.

A trick for English text: lines start on the left. On a sideways page, if the first word of each line sits at the bottom, the top of the page points left. For Arabic text it is the reverse, since lines start on the right. Numbers always read left to right on an upright page, so you can follow them in either language.

What each button does in numbers

In Rotate PDF pages every button adds a clockwise angle to the page. 'Right 90°' adds 90, '180°' adds 180, and 'Left 90°' adds 270, because a quarter turn to the left lands you in the same place as three quarter turns to the right.

A wrong guess costs nothing

You do not need to think hard. Press a button and look at the thumbnail. If it is upright, you are done. If it went upside down, you picked the opposite direction, so press '180°' on the same page. Nothing is saved into a file until you press 'Download rotated PDF', and even then your original file stays as it was.

Different pages, different directions

In scanned files one page may lean left and another right. Choose 'Selected pages', select the first and press its button, then change the selection to the second and press the other button. The summary lists each angle with its pages before you download, for example: 90° clockwise: pages 2, and 270° clockwise: pages 5.