Crop PDF Pages

How to Crop a PDF

1. 1

   Choose a PDF

   Drop one PDF on the tool, choose it from your files or paste it.

2. 2

   Set the box

   Drag the handles, or press Trim margins, then pick All pages, This page or a Range.

3. 3

   Download

   Press Crop PDF and save the file, or use the link under it to change the crop and try again.

Crop PDF Pages With a Box

To crop PDF pages, set a box on the first page and keep only what is inside it. Drag the handles on the corners and edges, or drag inside the box to move it. With a mouse you can also draw a new box. On a phone, drag the handles with a finger. The arrow keys work too.

Use the arrows above the page to step through the document. The box stays in the same place on every page, so you can check it against other pages before you crop. Reset puts the box back on the whole page.

The box is remembered as a share of the page, not as fixed inches. On a page with a different size, the same share of that page is cropped. A box that cuts a tenth off the left edge cuts a tenth of each page's own width. Rotated pages are cropped the way they are displayed, so the crop lands where you drew the box.

Remove Margins From PDF

To remove margins from a PDF, press Trim margins. The tool looks for the white space around the content and puts the box around it, with a little space left. The box is large enough for the content of every page it checked. You can still adjust the box by hand afterward.

Trim margins looks at the pages you chose to crop, so pick All pages, This page or a Range first. Once the pages are cropped, you can number them with Bates numbers if the document needs it.

What This PDF Cropper Does

The tool changes only the page boxes of the PDF, which tell a viewer which part of each page to show. The page content is not redrawn. The PDF stays a real PDF: text stays selectable and searchable, images and scans are not compressed again, links and form fields stay, and quality does not drop.

The file size stays about the same. The cropped pages are smaller pages, so a cropped Letter page is no longer Letter size. The content is not scaled up. The result is a new file with -cropped added to its name, and your original is not changed.

• Up to 100 MB and 1,000 pages on a computer. Up to 30 MB and 300 pages on a phone.
• A password-protected PDF has to be unlocked first. Save a copy without the password, then crop it.
• One PDF at a time, and one box for all the pages you choose. To crop pages in different ways, crop one page or one range, download the result, and run it through the tool again with a new box.
• The smallest box is 5 percent of the page's width or height.
• Trim margins looks for white space. On scanned pages with gray or speckled edges it may leave more margin, or find none. In a long document it checks a sample of pages, up to 20 on a computer and up to 10 on a phone, spread evenly through the document. Step through the pages before you crop.
• The tool does not add margins, resize the content or change the page content.
• A digitally signed PDF will no longer show a valid signature after cropping, as after any edit.

What Cropping Does Not Remove

Cropping hides the part of a page outside the box. It does not delete it from the file. The hidden part is still inside the PDF, and other software can bring it back by resetting the page boxes. Some programs may also find or copy hidden text. So cropping is not a way to remove private content.

If a PDF holds confidential details, do not rely on a crop to protect them. For a photo or screenshot with private details, Redact Image covers them with a solid box in the picture itself. To strip hidden author details from a file, use the metadata remover.

Frequently Asked Questions

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