My bilingual catalog alternates Arabic and English pages. How do I pull out the Arabic version on its own?

Why split the languages apart?

An alternating catalog works well in print or at a trade stand where everyone picks up the same copy, but it is a nuisance on a phone: an Arabic-speaking customer flicks past half the pages without needing them. Send each customer the version in their language and they reach the products faster, with half the page count to scroll.

First, check the alternation pattern

Do not assume the Arabic pages are the odd ones. Open the catalog and look at the first four pages. In some catalogs the cover is shared by both languages and alternation starts on page 2, so Arabic ends up on even pages. And a file designed as facing spreads may put Arabic on the right and English on the left. Type the pattern you see, not the one you expect.

Method one: extract twice

1. Open Split PDF and choose the catalog.
2. Choose “Extract to one PDF”.
3. Type the Arabic pages: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. Spaces work instead of commas if that is quicker: 1 3 5 7 9 11.
4. Press “Split and download” to get catalog-pages-1_3_5_7_9_11.pdf with 6 pages.
5. Repeat with 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 for the English version.

Method two: both versions in one split

In “One PDF per range”, a comma starts a new file and a space adds pages to the same file. So type the Arabic pages with spaces, then a comma, then the English pages with spaces.

Limits worth knowing

• There is no ready-made odd or even option, so you type the numbers yourself. For a 60-page catalog that means 30 numbers, so type them once and keep them in a note.
• Pages are always written to the output in ascending order, which is what you want here: page 3 comes after 1 and before 5.
• If you want the shared cover at the start of both versions, add its number to each group, such as 1 2 4 6, 1 3 5 7.
• If you need a non-ascending order after extracting, such as putting the offers page first, rearrange the output with Reorder PDF pages.