Scan double-sided documents with a single-sided scanner

If you need to scan a double-sided document but your scanner only supports single-sided scanning, it’s easy to work around this in Linux using pdftk.

This assumes your scanned pages are saved as .pdf.

1. Install pdftk

On Debian/Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt install pdftk

2. Scan odd pages

First, scan the front sides of the document and save them as odd.pdf.

On most scanners with an automatic document feeder (ADF), these pages will already be in the correct order (1, 3, 5, 7…).

3. Scan even pages

Flip the stack of paper and scan the back sides into a file called even.pdf.

If you flipped the whole stack at once, the pages will usually be scanned in reverse order (e.g. 8, 6, 4, 2). Don’t worry — the next step fixes that.

4. Merge and reorder pages

Combine both files into a single document. The shuffle option interleaves pages, and Bend-1 tells pdftk to read the second file (even pages) in reverse order:

pdftk A=odd.pdf B=even.pdf shuffle A Bend-1 output document.pdf

5. Result

You’ll get a final document.pdf with all pages correctly ordered.

💡 Tip: If you do this often, it may be worth getting a scanner with an automatic feeder and true duplex scanning. It’ll save you time and reduce the chance of paper jams.