Crop PDF
Crop PDF pages to remove wide margins or scanner edges. Drag a crop box on the page or enter exact measurements, and apply to every page.
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About This Tool
Two things create the need to crop. Academic PDFs come with enormous print margins that waste half the screen on a tablet. Scans come with a black or grey border where the document did not fill the glass, plus whatever was sitting next to it on the platen.
Drag a crop box over the page preview, or type exact margin values if you need it precise and repeatable. The crop can be applied to every page at once, which is what you want for a uniform document, or to a range when the first page has a different layout.
Cropping changes the visible page box rather than deleting content, so text stays selectable and searchable right up to the new edge. Nothing is rasterised.
How to Use
Load the PDF
Drop in the file. The first page renders with a draggable crop box.
Set the crop area
Drag the handles, or enter top, bottom, left and right margins in millimetres or points for exact control.
Choose which pages
Apply to all pages, or restrict to a range if the cover needs different treatment.
Crop and download
Save the trimmed PDF. Text within the visible area remains fully selectable.
Use Cases
Reading papers on a tablet
Trimming the margins off a two-column journal article roughly doubles the usable text size on a 10-inch screen.
Cleaning up scans
Remove the black border and the edge of the desk that came through when the page did not cover the scanner glass.
Standardising a bundle
Pages from several sources cropped to one consistent size so the printed pack looks deliberate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the cropped-off content deleted?
Cropping adjusts the page box, so hidden content technically remains in the file. If the margins contained something sensitive, redact it first, then crop.
Can I crop each page differently?
Apply one crop to a range, then run the tool again with different values for another range. A single pass uses one crop box.
Does cropping reduce file size?
Barely. The content is still there, just not displayed. Use Compress PDF if size is the goal.
Will the text still be searchable?
Yes. Cropping does not rasterise anything - the text layer is untouched.