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Participant
Dec 18, 2007 6:12 PM UTC
Answered

How to change Margins in PDF?

Thank you in advance for your assistance. I am evaluating 8.0 Professional on my pc (XP SP2 w/ 3.5GB of RAM and 2.5GHZ CPU). I want to see if the Professional can modify margins of pdf files that I get from various places but I am not finding anything in the documentation or via google. This should be an easy thing to do, like in MS Word you go to "Page Setup" and change the margins. I cannot find this functionality in Acrobat 8.0. Can someone please tell me how to modify the margins? The document in it's present configuration wastes paper and leaves alot of it blank when it could be printed on. Trying to be a conscientious worker by not wasting paper and Acrobat is not cooperating with me.

Thanks,
Erik

CtDave
CtDaveCorrect answer
Participating Frequently
Apr 29, 2010 3:07 AM UTC

Access the Crop Pages dialog (via the Crop Tool).
The bottom pane, Change Page Size permits configuration of a custom width and height.
Bumping out these values might meet your needs.

Be well...

101 replies

Participant
Oct 18, 2023 8:26 AM UTC

In Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional, you can adjust the margins of a PDF document by using the "Crop Pages" tool. To access this feature, go to the "Document" menu, select "Crop Pages," and then you can manually adjust the margins by entering new values or by dragging the margins' edges to your desired size. This will help you reduce wasted paper and make your PDFs more efficient.

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Participant
Sep 28, 2023 8:38 PM UTC

I was printing using a photocopier (Canon iR-ADV C5860) that can hole punch, and the holes were being punched into the text.

 

I solved it by going into advanced printing preferences and changing the Gutter size in mm. I increased the Gutter by a couple of millimetres and it reduced the entire page anchored to the right side of the page rather than the top left.

 

Mind you, *everything* was reduced (text became smaller) all proportions & aspect ratio intact. Think of treating the page like an image and reducing the entire image.

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Participant
Jun 1, 2023 6:18 PM UTC

Ctrl+p-->"more settings"--> Scale(%) set to 65%--> print (printing pdf that opened in a web page).  I'm facing a similar problem.  I have a report that exports to a pdf in a web browser and it has like 0.2" columns that get cut off when printed.  I don't want to nor have time to save it and manipulate it with Adobe DC or other program.  Using the print option "fit to printable area" does nothing.  And using the "system dialog" option to reduce the "% of actual size" only partially works (bottom and right side of page are still cut off).  The only thing that worked for me is to change the scale in the web page print menu.  

 

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laiwu
Participant
Jan 26, 2023 5:51 PM UTC

The whole thing is pretty goofy. I'm sick of the Adobe apologists intoning: "It's an image not a Word doc." What arrogance. So what? IMAGES can be resized, too. Erik wasn't asking the text to be re-flowed. Duh.

  • Weird, though, Acrobat does have a Custom Scale setting, but it disappears when I select Multiple Pages.
  • Weird #2: there is a nice Margin Setting dialog under Page Setup, but the choices always seem to be greyed out, whether I'm in sigle or multiple pages. What the hey!?

 

Okay, I won't meet the voices of arrogance with more whining. I have a cheap workaround, Erik:

When my choice of 2pp side-by-side on landscape prints too tiny... with tons of white margin, I just trick the program into thinking I'm printing on A4 paper (the European size 0.69" longer than our 8.5x11 letter). Then, by killing most of the side margin space, the result comes out with a more readable typesize. The heck with buying add-ons, etc. 

 

Hope this trick helps until Adobe's programmers wise up.

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JoCK.BCC
Participant
Feb 9, 2023 1:44 PM UTC

I had the exact same problem, document printed fine from Word with the margin parameters I had set, but whenever I went to print from the PDF using Adobe it forces a 25mm (1") border around the whole document, no matter how much you scale or fit the page, and even though the margins were set in Word (and our printer was more than capable of printing in this area). I'm sorry Abode, but your free reader is pants. I highly recommend using C u t e P D F E d i t o r as this will print exactly how you want it, directly from your browser, and it has FREE edit functions and will convert to Word, Excel, whatever else you please - for FREE. 

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Participant
Jun 26, 2022 6:57 PM UTC

SO it is pretty sad that Adobe no longer allows you to set margins when printing -- you have to buy Acrobat Pro -- I am so tired of Adobe I could scream ... truly a piss poor product and business approach ... if you want to do ANYTHING with a pdf - you need to buy the full solution -- you suck Adobe!!

 

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Participant
May 10, 2022 9:01 PM UTC

This might help, I know late to the original question, but might help someone else seeking the same answer.

This helped re-size the PDF of a court document, which I was refiling as an exhibit, because the re-filing would add another court stamp at the top, and I wanted a space at the top so the court stamps did not overlap. (So, enlarged margins, but on a PDF I had no control or authority to edit in another program). 

Set Page Boxes (found searching for re-size), change page sizes, fixed sizes, then choose one of the default page sizes. This automatically created a larger margin and smaller image of the PDF document per page. 

This was done using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

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Participant
May 11, 2022 1:36 AM UTC
Thank you! I have moved on from the project that question was in relation
to long ago, but your information is very valuable. Much appreciated that
you passed it on.
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Participant
Nov 4, 2020 4:25 PM UTC

I found it much easier to simply print the document, then reduce the copy size as an ad hoc margin adjustment.  I needed the margins smaller and right side greater than left to add pdf document to a 3 prong notebook.  Printing them at 95% allowed me enough margin to do that and the resolution is clear nad readable.  Good luck fellow Adobians! 🙂

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Participant
Sep 23, 2020 2:55 AM UTC

With so many documents being distributed as PDFs it seems eminently reasonable that print dialog boxes -- or at least the "print to PDF" print dialog box -- would allow adjustment of even number page margins to have consistent margins on left and right pages when printing double sided. I wouldn't mind the intermediate "print to PDF" step if it accomplished the task.

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Participant
Apr 30, 2020 2:53 PM UTC

Helpful that it was stated .pdf is a final format, not set up for editing in major ways.  Acrobat will export, so I used that and opened in a compatible word processor.  That program had the margin changing feature.

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Legend
Nov 11, 2016 4:57 PM UTC

Did you try Acrobat? Adobe has these features, but not in the free Reader.

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Participant
Dec 14, 2018 12:57 PM UTC

@Test Screen Name, MVP

I'm using Acrobat 11 and I can't find any controls for formatting either a blank page, or receiving a finshed document where the text looks like it was tossed onto the page with variable margins and distances between lines. If these can be adjusted, please tell us how.

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Legend
Dec 16, 2018 9:12 AM UTC

Can't be except to crop the page to another size (which changes the visible margin). Acrobat is not Word.

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