How much should I trim?

Start with 20–30 points a side and look at the result. Scanner borders are usually 20–60 points; document margins are often 50–70.

Can I crop a single page?

Not in one pass — split the document, crop that part, and merge it back.

HowtocropthemarginsofaPDF

Two things send people looking for a crop: a scanner that captured the lid as a black border, and a document being read on a small screen where the margins are eating half the display.

3 minute read · Advorize PDF Tools

Points, not pixels

PDF measurements are in points: 1/72 of an inch. An A4 page is 595 × 842 points, so 72 trims an inch and about 28 trims a centimetre.

Start conservatively. Two passes of 20 points each is quicker than one pass of 60 that clipped a footer you needed.

Cropping hides, it does not delete

A crop sets the visible box on the page; the trimmed area is still in the file, just not displayed. That makes it fully reversible — and it means the document does not get smaller.

It also means a crop is not a redaction. If something is in the margin you do not want seen, crop and then flatten, so what remains is a rendered page rather than hidden content.

Different pages, different margins

One crop applies to every page. Where a document genuinely needs different trims — a landscape table in a portrait report — split it, crop each part, then merge the pieces back together.

The tool

Crop PDF

Trim the margins off every page at once.

Open it

Questions people ask

No. The content is hidden rather than removed, which is also why the crop can be undone.