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

I know this is an old thread but I came across it trying to find an answer to the same question because I had created a PDF from a number of jpgs that I needed to OCR. Acrobat Pro told me that the pages were too large for text recognition. Once I realised tat there seemed to be no solution, I did a bit of experimenting and found the definitive answer.

Open the pdf using Mac's preview app. Then print to pdf and, VOILA!, a file with the correct sized pages.

Hope this helps others in despair.

InDesign doesn't open PDFs. It can PLACE PDF files. Strongly advise against Photoshop as it will rasterise.

This is the actual correct answer:

https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/how-to-resize-pages-in-a-pdf-file

I have an affordable (read: free)  solution to every one of these problems.

I work in Prepress (on a Mac) so I have to do a LOT of funky things with Acrobat.  I've been kicking myself for a few days trying to find a way to take a customer's crops out and reduce the actual page (NOT crop it, but actually reduce the page size.).

Turns out if you download the (free) PDFwriter app for Mac, you have a virtual printer you can print PDFs to, even out of Acrobat.  Install this, and read the instructions  I'll wait….

1. Open your 20x40" PDF in Acrobat and go to the Print menu.

2. Pull down PDFwriter as your printer of choice.  In the "Page Setup..." dialogue pull down "Paper Size" to "Manage Custom Sizes..."

3. Click on the "plus" sign at the bottom and put in your specs (i.e., Page Size: 4"x8" with NO "Non-printable areas." (You can double-click on the "Untitled" document and change its name to 4x8.)

4. Click OK and make sure you select your new 4x8 custom size in the "Paper Size" pull-down menu.

5. Below that, in the "Scale" box choose 20%. This will reduce your 20x40 page to 4x8. Click OK.

6. Click on the "Printer..." button at bottom and pull down "Printer Features" from the "Layout" drop-down menu.

7. Where it says "Output Resolution," change it to anything you want.  (Since I work in high-end stuff, I usually select either 600, 1200 or 2400 dpi.  You don't need to go over 300 dpi if you're dealing with photos or grayscale pages, or if you don't care about the quality that much.  600 is usually fine.  Obviously, higher resolution will result in larger file sizes.)

8. Hit the "Print" button.  One last thing, In the main dialogue, you want to click on the "Advanced" tab at bottom and make sure "Print As Image" is turned OFF.

9. Go ahead and print.  You'll find your new (resized) page in the PDFwriter folder.

If you're worried about file size being too large:

1. Open the new 4x8 PDF.

2. Click Command-D for "Properties" and click on the "Description" tab.

3. If the File Size is over 5MB, close this dialogue and pull down "File" > "Save As" > Optimized PDF...

4. (The following assumes you still want a pretty decent PDF when finished.) In the various tabs, do NOT downsample any images and don't apply any compression.  Do NOT unembed any fonts.  I usually don't use "Optimize the PDF for fast web view" either.

5. Hit "OK" at lower right and give the new PDF a new name (I usually use the same name and put "_opt" before the PDF extension).

6. Open the new PDF and check the Properties again.  The file should be substantially smaller.

If anyone has any questions about this procedure, or would like to know how to do something similar, please don't hesitate to contact me. Hope this helps!

Hi,

settings->control panel->hardware and sound->View devices and printers->Adobe Pdf->Printer->Printer preferences->Layout->Advanced->A4

                                                                                                                                                                                              ->Adobe PDF settings->A4

And don't either to edit your Default settings (Standard), Default page size : 210.0 x 297.0 mm. (8.27 x 11.69 inches).

Et voilà!

Hi! maybe a little late, but you can try this;   Save your file or document (desktop for example). Find the file in your Finder window and select it. Click on File to access the contextual menu. Select “Get Info.” In the Get Info dialog box that opens, use the dropdown menu of applications under Open With to select Preview. then click on the “Change All” button and confirm your change. You can always open a specific PDF file within Adobe Reader, if you’d prefer. hope this can help!

What I would do is use the save as function and save as a Word file, make the changes in Word, then re-save as a PDF file. Word allows you to change page size very easily, plus you can change pictures to Jpeg and save lots of file space. Word can easily save as a

I had the same problem - converting a Powerpoint presentation to a letter-sized PDF. The suggestion above about opening it in Preview and then Exporting to PDF worked for me. If you click the Details button in the Save dialog it should say Letter. I did rename the file, just in case. When I opened the resulting PDF in Acrobat, it was scaled and rotated to fit letter size in Portrait view. There was obviously "letter-boxing" but the proportions were correct.

Hi there

I had the opposite problem, i.e. I had pages scanned somewhere between A4 and A5 and I wanted to convert them all to A4 before printing. I selected all of them in the page thumbnail (left pan), then used Tools --> Print Production -->Set Page Boxes. That opened up a screen and I adjusted the page size as well as Xoff and Yoff (how the smaller page is positioned over larger new page area). That gave me an output file which is now in A4 size and original pages of different sizes fitting well.

Not exactly what you're looking for but to print to a PDF where you can scale the file try opening it in Preview and then printing a PDF from there.