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miam20668303
Participant
September 8, 2017
Answered

Indesign A4 Exports to Letter sized PDF

  • September 8, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 5650 views

I have an Indesign document which shows A4 Page Size in the Document Setup.  When I export to PDF, it exports to Letter size.  How do I get it to export to A4 page size?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Bill Silbert

    If you are making your pdfs in the recommended way of File>Export>Adobe PDF then it is actually not possible to change the resulting page size from that which has been established in the InDesign Document Setup. See screen shot:

    4 replies

    vinny38
    vinny38
    Legend
    September 11, 2017

    Hi

    Please note that Document Setup does not necessarily reflects the actual size of your pages (they can also have different sizes).

    The Document Setup size is the size by default, but you can change the size of a or several page(s), or even Master pages, using the Page tool, or directly from the Page panel. (See example below:)

    The only explanation I can think of was that I inherited the file from a school colleague

    My guess is that your colleague did change page size somehow and you got confused with the Document Setup infos.

    You can check this using a Preflight profile that is set as "Document > All pages must use same size and orientation". Since default page [none] does keep default Document Setting size, Preflight should throw an error.

    Finally, if you want to re-apply A4 size to your Letter Pages, you could use the Liquid Layout feature (see: Liquid and alternate layouts in InDesign )

    Hope that helps

    Vinny

      Bill Silbert
      Community Expert
      Bill SilbertCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      September 11, 2017

      Which is why making a global change to a document's size should always be done through the document setup and not the page tool. It all makes sense now!

      Abambo
      Community Expert
      AbamboCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      September 10, 2017

      As BobLevine​ and Bill Silbert​ pointed out, it is not possible for an export to have a different page size then the designed page size, what ever size this is. The only way you can have this is by printing to a PDF printer and the printers default page is Letter

      My example is an A5 printing as A4!

      The recommended export option does not at all have a page size option! Even if you have different page sizes in your design, each page size exports according to its design size (+ eventually bleed and other elements you may have configured).

      ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer
        Bill Silbert
        Community Expert
        Bill SilbertCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
        Community Expert
        September 9, 2017

        If you are making your pdfs in the recommended way of File>Export>Adobe PDF then it is actually not possible to change the resulting page size from that which has been established in the InDesign Document Setup. See screen shot:

          BobLevine
          Community Expert
          BobLevineCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          September 8, 2017

          That is highly unusual. The only way I can think of that happening is by printing to PDF.

          What version of InDesign? What operating system?

          What are your export settings and how are you determining that the exported PDF is letter size?

            M
            miam20668303Author
            Participant
            September 11, 2017

            Hi Bob

            Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.  Yes, it's really strange because I was using the method described by Bill Silbert (comment below) File>Export>Adobe PDF and yet it was still exporting to letter size.  Fortunately it was a simple document, so I ended up cutting and pasting all of the elements into a completely new Indesign document - making sure it was set for A4 - and it exported to an A4 PDF perfectly.  The only explanation I can think of was that I inherited the file from a school colleague who'd created it in a previous version of Indesign so perhaps something was lost in translation.  Thank you for your help as well Abambo​.

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