Crop a PDF
To crop a PDF, open it in Edit PDF, choose Crop, and drag a box over the part of the page to keep, or trim every margin by a measure. CECO PDF hides what lies outside, keeps it in the file so Undo crop brings it back, and refuses a digitally signed PDF.
Crop a PDF now — it opens Edit PDF, with nothing to install; press “Crop” above the page.
- What it does: moves the visible edge of a page to the box you draw or the margins you trim, on one page or on every page.
- The check: every page is read back on the file as it will be kept, its content, its resources and its annotations compared byte for byte with what they were; a crop that changed any of them would not be stored.
- The price: cropping takes nothing from the free plan’s day. Downloading costs nothing when the files you started from have no corrections made here. A file made from a corrected document is priced as one.
The PDF you open is kept with your documents, and deleted after 90 days or whenever you delete it; every crop is a step you can take back while it is here. The privacy notice says what is kept, and why.
How do I crop a PDF?
- Open Edit PDF and choose your PDF. A PDF with a password opens once you type it.
- Press “Crop” in the toolbar. The hint under the page says what to do: “Drag over the part of the page to keep.”
- Choose the pages under “Which pages”: “This page” or “All pages”.
- Drag over what to keep, then press “Crop to this box”. Or set “Trim from every edge (mm)” and press “Trim the margins”: the same measure comes off every edge.
- Look at the result, and download it. “Undo crop” puts the page’s edges back as the file had them, however many crops came between.
Does cropping a PDF delete what is outside the box?
No, and that matters. A crop moves the page’s crop box, the edge a reader shows, and nothing else: what lies outside is still in the file, and so are its words. When the new edge cuts through words, the step says how many, and that “the part outside the crop is hidden, not removed, and stays in the file's text”. That is what lets “Undo crop” restore the page exactly. To take something off a page for good, such as a name or an address you must not send, use Redact PDF, which removes it and reads the file back to show it is gone.
Can I crop just some pages of a PDF?
In Edit PDF, a crop goes on the page you are on, or on every page. For a few pages, crop each one in turn; pages that should not be in the file at all are for Delete PDF pages. With “All pages”, the box you draw is used on every page, so if it falls outside a smaller page, the crop is refused and nothing changes.
Can I change a PDF to A4 by cropping it?
No. A crop only hides the edges of the page as it is: it does not scale what is on the page or change the paper size, and nothing here does that. Trimming a page to the shape of A4 leaves what is on it at the size it was.
What you can and cannot do here
| What you want to do | Here |
|---|---|
| Crop to a box you draw | Yes, on “This page” or “All pages” |
| Trim the same margin from every edge | Yes, by a measure in millimetres |
| Trim a different amount from each edge | Not with the trim, which takes the same from every edge: drag a box instead |
| Put the page back as it was | Yes, with “Undo crop”, exactly |
| Delete what lies outside the box | No: it is hidden, not removed; Redact PDF removes things for good |
| Crop a PDF that carries a digital signature | No: editing a signed PDF breaks the signature, so it is refused. Crop it before it is signed |
| Change the page to another paper size | No: a crop only hides the page’s edges |
| Crop a page, then turn it into a picture | Yes: download the cropped PDF and convert it with PDF to JPG; the picture is the page as cropped |
Questions people ask
Is cropping a PDF free?
Cropping takes nothing from the free plan’s day. Downloading costs nothing when the files you started from have no corrections made here. A file made from a corrected document is priced as one. What a download costs otherwise is on the pricing page.
How do I remove the white margins from a PDF?
Press “Crop”, choose “All pages”, set the measure in “Trim from every edge (mm)” and press “Trim the margins”. If the margins are uneven, drag a box round what to keep instead.
Can I crop a scanned PDF?
Yes. A scan is a picture on a page, and the crop box decides how much of it is shown, so a dark border or the edge of the facing page goes out of view. The picture itself stays whole in the file.
Will the cropped-off part still be in the file I download?
Yes. It is hidden, not removed, and the words in it stay in the file’s text, where a program that reads the file can find them. If no one may see it, redact it instead.
Why was my crop refused?
A PDF that carries a digital signature is refused, because any change would break the signature. So is a box that falls outside a page, and margins that would leave nothing of it.
Can I crop a PDF on a Mac?
Yes: Edit PDF runs in Safari, Chrome or Firefox, with nothing to install, and the box is dragged with the trackpad or a mouse.
Does cropping make the PDF smaller?
No: nothing is thrown away, so the file stays about the size it was. To make it smaller, use Compress PDF.
Related pages
- Edit PDF, for text boxes, shapes, highlights and notes
- Redact PDF, to remove something from a page for good
- PDF to JPG, to turn the cropped pages into pictures
- Delete PDF pages, to take whole pages out
- Rotate PDF, to turn pages the right way up
- Repair PDF, for a file that is damaged rather than badly framed
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