How to crop a PDF
- Drop your PDF. One file, any page size.
- Set the trim. A single percentage for all four edges, or untick the box and dial each edge in on its own.
- Click Crop, then Download. Every page gets the same trim.
Trimming scan margins
Scanners photograph the whole glass, so a receipt or a passport page arrives marooned in an inch of grey nothing. Phone scans do the same with a slab of desk around the edges. Cropping pulls the page in to the part anyone actually wants to read, which also means it fills the screen instead of floating in a frame.
The other regular use is stripping printer marks and headers off a document before it goes into a booklet or a slide. If you are heading that way, booklet printing and multiple pages per sheet take the cropped file from here.
What cropping does not do
A crop hides content rather than erasing it, which matters for anything sensitive. The trimmed region is still inside the file and can be recovered by anyone who knows to widen the page box again. That is fine for tidying a scan, and no substitute for redaction. To make content unrecoverable, run the pages through PDF to images and rebuild with images to PDF, which throws away everything outside the visible pixels.
Common uses for cropping PDFs
- Tidy up a scan: cut the grey border a flatbed scanner leaves around a receipt or ID.
- Trim phone-camera scans: lose the desk and the shadow around a photographed page.
- Strip printer marks: remove crop marks and running headers before reprinting a document.
- Fill the screen: pull wide margins in so the text is readable on a phone.
Frequently asked questions
How do I crop a PDF?
Drop the file above and say how much to take off each edge, as a percentage. Ten percent all round suits most scans. Click Crop and the trimmed copy downloads.
Does cropping delete the content it hides?
It does not, and any tool telling you otherwise is glossing over how PDF works. Cropping narrows the page box that viewers and printers obey, so the trimmed strip stops appearing and stops printing, but the bytes stay in the file. If you need it gone for good, export the pages as images and build a fresh PDF from those.
Why percentages instead of millimetres?
One setting then works whether the document is A4, Letter, or an odd scanner size, and it holds up on files whose pages are not all the same size.
Can I crop one page differently from the rest?
Not yet. The trim applies to every page, which is what a scan with consistent junk margins needs. Per-page cropping is on the list.
Is my document uploaded?
No. The crop is applied by your own browser, so a contract or a medical scan never goes anywhere.