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How do I change page size of an existing .pdf?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
August 5, 2013
18 replies
947283 views

I have Adobe Acrobat XI Pro on my Mac running 10.6.

How do I resize an existing .pdf document that is 20" x 40" down to 4" x 8"?

Thanks!

Bob

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer AnandSri

You're welcome.

Hello Johnmc,

Sorry for the delayed response and inconvenience caused. Please refer to the following Adobe article and discussion which discuss about resizing a PDF RESIZE PDF

You can also refer to the Adobe article Scale or resize printed pages in Acrobat and Reader

Feel free to update this discussion for any further assistance.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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J

JoeTourist

Participant

You can't resize the page of an existing document within Adobe Acrobat on a Mac, as you have stated. I have found the following procedure works with PDFs I have created from large sized images created by scanners (which result in large sized pages).

1. Open the document with Mac Preview, then File > Export as PDF

The default page size is letter size, or you can choose another page size.

2. Then open the resulting document with Adobe Acrobat.

3. File > Save as other... > Optimized PDF

4. The open the resulting document with Adobe Acrobat.

5. Tools > Text Recognition > In this file

6. Finally, you get to save the reduced page size, and reduced file size document!

K

karenpy

Participating Frequently

The trick is to open the PDF in Preview app by dragging the PDF onto the Preview application icon. It doesn't work if you have the PDF selected and hit the spacebar.

This seems to open a different version of Preview. Once you've opened the doc in Preview, you can use all the regular PRINT options including select the option to scale and save as a new PDF.

homeboy4

Community Expert

I had a similar problem. I needed to resize a multi-page PDF from 11x17 to 8.5x11. I couldn't figure out how to do it easily in Acrobat, but it's a snap in CutePDF -- which can be had for free on a trial basis or only costs $49.95. You load the pdf, click on "page tool," then "resize pages," then you have a menu of choices. In my case "letter" was already highlighed. I changed the orientation to "landscape," clicked "OK" and it was done in seconds.

V

valray123

Participant

The best workaround I've found is to open the pdf in Preview (the app) instead of in Acrobat. Then print to pdf at the desired paper size.

A

Anonymous

Opening in Preview, setting paper size to Letter and saving as PDF allowed me to convert a PDF sized at .85" x 1.1" to 8.5" x 11". (I created a dupe PDF, in order to save comments.)

I was also able to create a 4" x 8" custom size and create a PDF at that size also.

Both PDFs came out fine...hope this helps. If I haven't been clear as to the steps I took please let me know.

Z

Zebideedoodah

Participating Frequently

Don't mean to sound dim, but why can't you just set the output page size to letter/A4 and choose Shrink To Printable Area/Fit To Printable Area in the Print dialogue box? Or just choose a percentage to print it to and adjust up or down until you get the best result?

R

rdmartin_1Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks ccollins59, but on the Mac (running Mac OS 10.6), you can't "print" a pdf from Adobe Acrobat XI Pro.

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rdmartin_1Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you Gilad D, Steve and Bill for your answers. Unfortunately, they don't solve my problem.

Acrobat does not have a virtual printer option for a Mac operation 10.6. The only way you can "print" to a .pdf is by opening up any application and using File -> Print -> PDF -> Save as PDF.

Any application, that is, except Acrobat.

The Acrobat print dialog box gives the user a robust number of options to manipulate the printing of a document. Sadly, there is no "print to PDF" option. When you choose "Printer" (lower left corner), you get the printer's default dialog box that gives making a PDF an option. However if you choose this, another dialog box pops up stating "Saving a PDF file when printing is not supported. Instead, choose File > Save." When you go to File > Save, it is greyed out (since you are using an existing saved PDF file). If you try Save As, you are not given the option to resize the page.

Alternatively, when you open the existing PDF file in Macintosh's Preview or Skim applications, you are given the option in the print dialog boxes to scale the image. However when you print to a PDF, the file size does not change (which is one of the driving motivations for changing the page size).

I can't believe that Adobe doesn't have an option in Acrobat to address this issue. While I appreciate the suggestions regarding InDesign (or even PhotoShop for that matter), I'd rather not drop $400 +/- for a program to solve a problem that a reasonable person would expect Acrobat to do itself.

Please... are there any other options?

Thank you,

Bob

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Those are the options I'm aware of.

There are many features which people think "should be" in Acrobat (or any large application). You can file a feature request here to pass what you think should be included to those who make the decisions:

Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

R

rdmartin_1Author

Participating Frequently

Ah, so it isn't really the size in inches that concerns you, it's the size in megabytes.

I can tell you that the high end tools for resizing in inches do nothing to change the size; if ever Acrobat added a tool to do that it would probably be the same.

There's no direct connection between size in inches and size in megabytes. To reduce the latter, you can reduce the resolution of images using tools already in Acrobat. But maps are often made up of line drawings, which cannot be reduced.

Limiting email to 5 megabytes is still good manners. Consider the person forced to fetch your email on a cellphone paying by the megabyte! But there are many ways to send large files other than email, such as Adobe's sendnow service.

Test Screen Name - thank you.

For me, it is both screen size and file size. In my business, I have just a few moments to capture a prospective investor's attention. If the rendering of the project is a huge (40", say) then the subsequent 8 1/2" pages will show on some readers as being very small (since the initial screen view was sized to fit the largest document in the file). Having all the pages fit into the same width just makes the presentation a little more professional.

I've been using PhotoShop since V 1.0 in 1990 and usually use it to resize large PDF documents. I found myself doing that again this weekend and then had the thought, "Why can't my $200 Acrobat application do this?"

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Alternate method (if you have Adobe InDesign): Place the large PDF in InDesign. Scale it to the desired size. Choose File > Export > Print and create a new PDF.

B

Bill12

Inspiring

In both of these cases you will lose any markup. However, they are the same processes I would have recommended also. You might be able to select everything on the page and then reduce the size, but I don't think you can do this easily. You would then have to shrink the page (with the crop tool). Just printing is probably the fastest solution.

try67

Community Expert

Print it to a new PDF file with that page size...

X

XYZENG-5XjEYJ

Participant

The print to new page size does not work well.

This would work but does not allow you to control the
margins especially when going up in paper size. There is a Change paper size
dialog in the Crop tools but it does seems to create the new page size but you lose
all the content of the page.

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