How to Сrop a PDF?

by Lina Thorne • Updated 3/6/2025 · Posted in Marketing

One of the safest and most secure formats for documents is PDF. Files in this format can be easily viewed on practically any device and operating system, yet making changes to them tends to be a bit problematic. Fortunately, cropping a PDF is not particularly hard.

You might need to crop a PDF for a number of reasons. For instance, you might need to get rid of some confidential information or share only a part of your single-page document for easier comprehension. It’s also a great way to remove blank spaces and unwanted margins. This can make your document look much neater and more professional.

With the help of cropping, you can eliminate all the unnecessary elements and highlight what’s really important.

On top of all that, if your PDF happens to contain pages of different sizes, cropping them might help you bring in some consistency.

If you want your files to be easy to read and aesthetically pleasing, it’s vital for you to learn how to crop a PDF; no matter whether you’re working with regular documents, various forms, presentations or scanned documents.

This guide features detailed instructions on how to crop a single and multiple PDF pages using built-in apps as well as apps that work on various operating systems.

Keep reading to learn more!

How to Сrop a PDF in Adobe Acrobat

Let’s start with probably the most common method.

Why is it common? Well, because it involves using Adobe Acrobat which is a very popular software for working with PDFs. It doesn’t come pre-installed, however, since it’s so wide-spread, there’s a high chance that you already have it on your device. Adobe Acrobat is available for both Mac and Windows.

Before we begin, there’s something you need to know about this method.

Cropping a PDF in Adobe Acrobat is not the same as cropping an image. In other words, the unnecessary information simply gets hidden. It’s not deleted. Therefore, the file size of your modified PDF won’t be reduced. On the bright side, it will be easy to restore the modified pages to their original condition.

How you can crop a PDF in Adobe Acrobat:

1. Open the necessary file in Adobe Acrobat. If you want to get rid of the edges of a page, then you might need to zoom out. This way, the whole page will be visible and this should make cropping easier.
2. Choose Edit PDF in the toolbar.
3. Select the Crop Pages option at the top.
4. Click and drag the crosshair over the area that you want to keep. It’s okay if you don’t get your selection perfectly right away.
5. Once the selection is made, you will see the sizing handles. Drag them to make the necessary adjustments to your selection.
6. Double-click inside the cropping area. This will open the Select Page Boxes dialog.
7. Here, you can set different settings. You can change the Units if necessary. For instance, you can set centimeters instead of inches.
   
8. When the Show All Boxes is enabled, you will see rectangles of different colors. These colors indicate the CropBox, ArtBox, TrimBox and BleedBox. Please note that only one colored line will appear if several margins coincide. Learn more about the margins. CropBox is what is usually displayed by a PDF viewer. The area that contains the artwork of a page is usually indicated by ArtBox. It can include some white space. TrimBox actually defines the page size which gets printed. Please note that by default the TrimBox is equal to the CropBox. You should worry about the BleedBox only if your pages will be printed out in a production environment because it defines the clipping path. This way, it will be easier to trim or fold paper when the printing is done. The BleedBox can be larger than the TrimBox by a couple of millimeters.
9. In the Margin Controls section there are also two features that you can enable. If you tick the Constrain Proportions, the proportions of the cropped area will be locked. This option is for you if you want margins to be at the same distance. If you enable the Remove White Margins, the page will be cropped to the ArtBox margin. In other words, all the elements of the page will be included. This option can help you trim the edges of a page quickly and accurately.
10. You can actually make some further changes to your cropping area in the Margin Controls section. Enter new values in Top, Bottom, Left, Right sections. Please note that if you enable the Constrain Proportions, the values in other boxes will change automatically as soon as you change the value in one of the boxes. For instance, if you change the value in the Bottom, the other values will also change without you doing anything. If this isn’t what you want, disable the Constrain Proportions feature, then make the necessary.
11. If you want to get rid of the cropping, click on Set to Zero.
12. But if you want to restore the cropping, click on Revert to Selection.
13. Finally, if you are working with a multi-page document and want to apply the changes to all the pages, select the All option in the Page Range. It’s also possible to pick a specific range of pages or apply the changes to only one page if necessary.
14. When you are ready to apply the cropping to your PDF files, click OK.

That’s it! Your pages are cropped.

Undo the PDF cropping

What if you need to open the Set Page Boxes dialog again? For instance, if you want to undo the cropping? This dialog can be opened in a different way.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to Tools > Print Production.
2. Once the toolkit of the Print Production is open, select Set Page Boxes.
3. Click the Set to Zero button to undo the cropping. The pages in your PDF will be restored to their original condition.

Cropping a PDF in Adobe Acrobat is quite easy, though if you are new to working with PDFs you might experience some issues at first.

Please note that Adobe Acrobat does have a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, but unfortunately, you will need to purchase the Pro version to use the cropping feature.

How to Crop a PDF on Mac

It is possible to use Adobe Acrobat on a Mac, but actually, you don’t need to. You can use a free native app for cropping a PDF.

Preview can be used not only for editing images, but also to make some minor changes to PDF files. For instance, you can highlight some parts of text, write on a PDF, sign a document and, of course, crop PDF pages.

Follow these simple steps:

1. Open the necessary PDF in Preview and click on the Show Markup Toolbar button. This will reveal the Markup toolkit.
2. Next choose the Rectangular Selection, then click and drag the crosshair over the part of the page that you want to keep. This will create a selection.
3. Edit your newly created selection if necessary.
4. When you are happy with the selection, click on the Crop button in the toolbar.
5. The Preview will warn you that the cropped-out areas won’t be deleted. They will simply become invisible, which is similar to Adobe Acrobat. Simply click “OK” and your page will be cropped.
6. Go to File > Save or File > Save As to save the changes.

That’s it!

One page of your PDF is cropped.

But what if you want to crop all the pages?

1. Once you open your multi-page PDF in Preview, go to View > Thumbnails. If you already see the thumbnails, you can skip this step.
2. In the thumbnails panel click on the first page to select it. Then hold SHIFT and click on the last page. All the pages will be selected.
3. When all the pages are selected, draw the rectangular selection on the first page, adjust it, if necessary, then click on the Crop button. The pages will be cropped. Yep, it’s that easy!

There are two ways to undo the cropping.

If you’ve just applied the changes, click on Edit >Undo Crop.

If you want to revert to the original later, you will need to go to File > Revert to > Browse all versions, then locate the version that you had before the cropping.

Here’s a tip

It’s always a good idea to keep the original file unchanged. You can create a copy of your file first, then crop it. Or you can save the modified version as a separate file. This is a good idea because you will be able to get back to the original at any point.

How to Crop a PDF on Windows

Unfortunately, there’s no native app for cropping PDF pages on a Windows computer. But there’s a workaround which involves using built-in tools.

Now, it does have some limitations and requires a little bit of time. Nevertheless, if all you need is to crop just a couple of pages, this method should do the trick.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open the necessary document in a browser or a PDF reader, then find the page that you want to crop. Depending on which part you want to crop, you might need to zoom out.
2. Open the search panel and type in “snip”, then select the Snipping Tool.
3. In the Snipping Tool, click on New.
4. Draw a rectangular selection over the area that needs to be kept. Please note that you will need to be precise here because once you let go off the mouse, a new snip will be created. There will be no sizing handles for you to edit the selection.
5. Save your newly created snip as an image file – PNG or JPG – by clicking on the Save button.
6. Find the folder where you saved your image to and open the image. Go to File > Print or simply click on the Print button.
7. In the Print menu make the necessary adjustments, then select the Microsoft Print to PDF option and click on Print. Your image will be saved as a PDF file.

And that’s how you can crop a PDF page on Windows for free! It might be a bit complicated, but you will still be able to do this even if you are a beginner. Moreover, you will be able to do this without the internet connection or downloading any additional software.

The main drawback of this method, though, is that you will be able to crop only one page at a time. It will be very time-consuming to use this method for cropping multiple pages.

How to Crop a PDF on Windows Using SmallPDF

Well, this method is actually applicable to a wide range of devices and operating systems, not just Windows.

SmallPDF is an app for cropping PDF pages which works in a browser. So, you will need the internet connection, yet you will be able to use it on almost any device. This online app has an intuitive interface and works quite fast. You won’t need to create an account, either.

Here’s how to crop a PDF in this online app:

1. Open SmallPDF’s app for cropping PDF and import your file.
2. Drag the crosshair over the necessary area.
3. Click inside the selected area, then drag the cursor to reposition the cropping area. Adjust the sizing handles to resize it.
4. Enable the Apply selection to all pages option if you want to crop all pages. With this option you will be able to crop all the pages in your document in one and the same way. Disable it if you want to crop only one page.
5. Click on the Tick button to apply the cropping. Click on the Trash to get rid of the cropping area.
   
6. When you’re ready, click on Finish. Wait a bit, then click on Download to download your modified document.

This was definitely quicker and easier than the workaround, right?

Please note, though, that SmallPDF’s free version does have its limitations – for instance, there’s a limitation on the number of downloads.

How to Crop a PDF using Watermarkly

This final method is also a bit of a workaround, but it requires using an online app. So, you will be able to do this on nearly any internet-connected device.

Why is it a workaround? Well, you can use Watermarkly for watermarking PDFs – it’s a great way to protect your documents from unauthorized use as well as promote your brand. However, the only cropping app you will find on this website is for images, not PDFs.

Here are the steps that you need to follow:

1. Open the Convert to JPG app on Watermarkly’s website, then import your PDF file. Watermarkly supports batch-processing, so you can upload several multi-paged files if you need to.
2. Choose the image quality and whether images should be resized or not, then start the conversion by clicking on Convert Files.
3. Download your JPEG images to your device.
4. Next open Watermarkly’s image cropper and import your converted images.
5. You can do freehand cropping, enter your own pixel dimensions or use one of the ready-made cropping templates.
6. Adjust the cropping area on each image.
7. Specify the export settings and start the processing. When the processing is finished, download your cropped images.
8. Now, you can share your files as images or turn them back into PDFs. You can do that with the Print to PDF feature, described in the Snipping Tool method.
9. Alternatively, you can batch-crop your images, then open MS Word, if you have it, and insert your cropped images into every page by going to Insert > Picture in the ribbon.
10. When your Word file is filled with your images, navigate to File > Save as Adobe PDF. This will automatically create a copy of your document which will then be saved as a PDF.

All done!

The main downside of this method is that it requires quite a few steps as well as switching between the apps and formats. You need to convert your PDF into images, then crop them, then convert them back into PDFs. It can be quite tiresome, indeed.

However, converting your PDF to JPEG might not be such a bad idea, especially if your file needs to be sent to someone. It can be easier to view an image file than a PDF file on a mobile device, for instance.

Plus, if you are using a messenger for sharing, you can send your file as a compressed image and the receiver won’t have to download to view it. Whereas a PDF file can be sent only as a document, which the receiver will need to download and only then view it. So, if it’s not absolutely necessary for you to send your document in the PDF format, you might consider sending an image instead.

Conclusion

Cropping a PDF is an effective way to improve the readability and overall layout of your document. It’s also a great way to bring in some consistency, hide something or simply get rid of the redundant elements in your document.

Fortunately, it’s a pretty simple and quick task.

In fact, you can do it using different apps and online tools. No matter which method you choose, though, you will surely be able to achieve the desired results.

Now that you know how to crop a PDF in an efficient way, you will be able to make your documents look professional and clean as well as protect all the private information with minimum effort.

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