Preview: PDF page selection for printing

Question

Preview: PDF page selection for printing

On older versions of Preview, one could print part of a pdf by selecting the desired pages in the thumbnails, and then printing with the selected pages. Now, it seems you have to select the pages on the thumbnails in the print dialog box. The trouble is, that all the pages are selected by default, and you have to unselect the pages you don't want. This is a nuisance if I have a 100 page document and only want to print 2 pages.

Is there any way to get Preview to work the way it used to, where I can select the pages want rather than having to unselect the ones I don't want?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Jan 2, 2026 12:53 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

jblanchard1

Level 2

306 points

Jan 2, 2026 4:51 PM in response to Mikelis Bickis

In addition to dwb's suggestion:

You can select the thumbnails in the sidebar of the Preview document before bringing up the print dialog; then bring up the print dialog and select Selection in Preview.

Similar to dwb's suggestion, you can also use the contextual menus in the print dialog's thumbnails to select what pages you want to print.

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Answer 2

dwb

Level 7

33,244 points

Jan 2, 2026 1:45 PM in response to Mikelis Bickis

That’s disappointing but I think I have a work around. In the dialog box you have the option to select a print range by start and stop number. Select that and choose 1 for start and stop. Then click on the Selection option below it and the only page selected is 1. Now you can select the thumbnails of the pages you want.

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