Crop PDF
Drag a box around the part of the page you want to keep, and trim every page to it. Nothing is uploaded, and the trim can be undone.
Drop your PDF here
They stay on your computer. Nothing is sent to a server.
How to crop the pages of a PDF
Most cropping is done for one of two reasons: a scan came out with a black border and half an inch of the scanner bed around the page, or a document made for paper is being read on a phone, where the margins waste a third of a small screen.
- Drop the PDF on the box at the top.
- Drag a box on the page around the part you want to keep. Everything outside it greys over, so you can see what is going.
- Or type the numbers, if you know them. They are percentages off each side, and the box and the numbers follow each other.
- Press Save the PDF. Every page is trimmed the same way.
Nothing is thrown away
A PDF page carries two sizes: how big the sheet is, and which part of it to show. Cropping moves the second one inwards. Everything outside the box is still in the file, it is simply not shown.
That is the honest thing to say about it, and it cuts both ways. It means a crop can always be undone - put the whole page back, and it is there. It also means cropping is not a way to hide something. If a name is in the margin you just cropped off, the name is still in the file, and anybody who opens it in an editor can bring it back.
To genuinely remove something from a page, use White out in the editor, or delete the page.
It also means the file does not get smaller. A cropped page is the same page with a smaller window on it. If size is the problem, use Compress PDF.
Every page the same
The trim is applied to every page, which is right for a scanned document where the same border is on all of them, and wrong for a document whose pages are not the same shape. Look at the result before you throw anything away.
Pages the file says to turn are handled: the edge you drag off the top of a sideways page is the top as you are looking at it, not the top of the stored sheet.
Good to know
- Does cropping make the file smaller?
- No. Nothing is removed, so nothing is saved. Compress PDF is the tool for size.
- Can I get the full page back?
- Yes. The part outside the crop is still in the file. This tool can put the whole page back, and your original is untouched anyway.
- Can I crop one page differently from the rest?
- Not here. One trim is applied to every page. Extract the odd page into its own file, crop that, and merge it back.
- Is cropping a way to hide private information?
- No. Cropped-off content is still in the file. White out the text in the editor, or delete the page.