Scans often have wide black or white margins, and some PDFs have headers or footers you don't need. Cropping trims each page to the part that matters.
Step by step
- Open the Crop PDF tool and choose your file. The first page appears with a crop box on it, and the area outside the box is dimmed.
- Drag the box to move it, or drag a corner handle to resize it. Use Reset box to start again.
- Pick where to apply it. All pages uses the same area on every page, which is ideal for removing the same margin throughout.
- For different crops on different pages, choose Each page separately, use the arrows to move between pages, and adjust the box on each page you want to crop. Pages you don't adjust are left alone.
- Click Crop and download. The new file is named after the original with -cropped added.
Important: cropping hides, it doesn't delete
A cropped PDF shows only the area you chose, in every viewer. But the parts outside the box are still stored inside the file, and someone with the right tools could recover them. Don't rely on cropping to remove anything sensitive.
To remove the hidden area for good, run the cropped file through the Compress tool with Maximum reduction ticked. That turns each page into an image of only the visible area. The text will no longer be selectable afterwards.
Tips
- Look through a few pages before using All pages, in case the content moves around.
- Pages with a rotation set (sideways pages) are handled correctly.
- Your original file is never changed, and nothing is uploaded.