How to crop a PDF: trim the margins step by step

Drop the PDFs anywhere on the page, or press Add files. The selected document opens big in the middle with a frame over its page; the thumbnails beside it and the pager above take you through its pages.

Fit to content on every page looks at every page, finds where there is ink, and puts the frame around it - around the content of all the pages together, so nothing on any page is cut off. Padding leaves a little white around it: None, 2% or 5%.

• Drag the frame to move it, its handles to resize it; the thirds lines help you keep it straight.
• Cut off each edge (mm) - four steppers, top, right, bottom and left, in millimetres of the page.
• Whole page sets the frame back to the full page.

Apply to decides which pages share a frame:

• All pages - one frame for every page: the usual case for a document scanned in one go.
• Odd / even - one frame for the odd pages and one for the even ones, for a scanned book whose gutter switches sides. Turn to an odd page to set the odd frame, to an even page for the even one.
• Each page - every page its own frame; a page you haven't framed keeps its whole area.

Press Crop pages. The line under the button counts the cropped pages. The file is saved to your device at once; the button then says Saved and turns into Save. Several files are saved together as a ZIP; Apply to every file copies the margins, in millimetres, to the other files first.

Cropping changes what a reader shows, not what the file holds: the content outside the frame is hidden, not deleted. To remove something for good, use Redact PDF.

Without an account, and with a free one, you can crop two files in a run, each up to 15 MB. With Pro there is no limit, and you can save a frame and its padding as a preset.

• Every page onto A4 after cropping? Resize PDF pages.
• Two cropped pages side by side on one sheet? N-up (Multiple Pages per Sheet).
• A crooked scan? Straighten PDF (Deskew) first.