how do I extract a few pages from a large document

If you have Adobe Acrobat XI (not free Adobe Reader), you can go to menu View -> Tools -> Pages and choose Extract under Pages panel:

You can also go to the Page Thumbnails Navigation Pane, at the left, to select the pages you want and use the mouse to drag and drop them onto your system desktop, for example, or any open folder window. With this last technique you can use Ctrl+click to select the pages and you are not limited to selecting a page range.

In Acrobat (this is not possible in the free Reader), you would select the pages that you want to extract in the Page Thunbnails pane on the left, then right-click and select Extract - this will create a new document with those pages that you've selected. You can also select Tools>Pages>Extract, and then specify your page range to achieve the same result.

Now you only have to do a Save As with the new document and give it a name and you are done.

Karl Heinz Kremer
PDF Acrobatics Without a Net
PDF Software Development, Training and More...
http://www.khkonsulting.com