How to crop a PDF
- Select Choose file or drop your PDF on the box. The first page appears as a preview.
- Drag on the preview to draw the part to keep. Everything outside the box is dimmed.
- To fine-tune, type the Left, Top, Right and Bottom trim in percent. This also works with a keyboard.
- Leave Pages empty to crop all pages, or enter pages like
2-4. - Select Crop PDF, then Download. The new file ends in
-cropped.
Crop box and media box
A PDF page has a media box, which is the full paper size, and a crop box, which is the part a viewer shows and a printer uses. This tool sets the crop box, so your text and images are not touched and the result is exact. That also means the hidden margins are still inside the file.
If you want the page itself to become smaller, tick Also make the pages smaller (set the media box). Then the media box is cut to the same area. For stronger removal of hidden content, such as covering sensitive text, do not rely on cropping alone. Flatten the file to images with Flatten PDF, or take the pages out as pictures.
Good uses
- Remove the wide white borders from a scan.
- Cut a figure or a table out of a page to place in a report.
- Trim a printer’s marks or a header you do not need.
- Make slides fit a screen better by removing blank edges.
Rotated and mixed pages
The box follows what you see. A page that is turned sideways is cropped on the visible area, not the stored one, so the result matches your preview. When pages have different sizes, the same fractions apply to each page, so margins stay in proportion.
Tips
- Use the first page as a guide. If other pages need different margins, crop them in a separate run with the Pages box.
- Fix a sideways scan first with Rotate PDF.
- Cropping a photo instead? Use Crop image.
- Reorder or remove pages with Organize PDF, and shrink the file with Compress PDF.
The crop runs with pdf-lib on your device. Your document is never uploaded.