How to change Margins in PDF?

[_Erik_Little_]

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

[_Gloria_Mc_ · Accepted solution]

Erik,
The others have (hopefully) made it clear to you that Acrobat is not a word processing or document layout program; (as Geo said) it's a document display program. If you have access to the source file from which the PDF was created, then change the margins in that file.

If no source, then -- at the risk of stating the obvious -- if you are trying to conserve paper, is the font of the document large enough that you could print two (cropped) pages of your document per physical page? That is an option for many printers. Also, printing two-sided. Just look at your printer's properties - hopefully you will find one or both of these options.

--GMc

[gkaiseril]

No, Acrobat and Reader are not like MS Word. They are page display programs. Changing the margin also changes the text wrapping and location.

But you can change the page scaling so the PDF margins fit the printer's margins in the "Print" UI.

[Erosfigilia03]

I converted a Word doc into a .pdf, but my word doc is 1/4 page and it gives me a full page in pdf.  How can I make it a 1/4 page in .pdf as well?

[Louis Morrical]

I also have a simular question. We have thousands of PDF documents that the Police and Fire stations have already saved. But the clerk of the courts now needs a 1 inch bourder at the top of all PDF's is there a faster way to set that up within the user profile so that when a pdf is opened that the corrections has been added to the boarder or is a one document at a time fix? If so this is going to take alot of man hours to make the changes.

[Ajantha250188344it3]

just try a different pdf reader like foxit...should fix any print margin issues easily. simple as that. good luck

[CatrinaRollingCoal]

I have Acrobat Standard DC and manipulate documents all the time. Not sure where all these, can't be done, isn't a processor, and such is coming from. Peope simply want to make the document stay at the top of the page while shrinking it enough to stay within the printable area. Use the EDIT option and click on the HEADER AND FOOTER button. Choose ADD and a window will pop up. Enter the margins you want in the MARGIN section on the top right of the window. Then click on the hyperlink that says APPEARANCE OPTIONS... . Enable the 1st checkbox that says SHRINK DOCUMENT TO AVOID OVERWRIGHTING THE DOCUMENT'S TEXT AND GRAPHICS. Enable the 2nd checkbox if you choose, then click OK. Click OK in the main window to close the ADD HEADER AND FOOTER window. Now click PRINT and select the PAGE SIZING you desire and you will see in the preview window how it is laid out and whatever space you set is now the margin.

Pay around with these steps. You can add multiple files to the ADD HEADER AND FOOTER window and adjust them all at once. I'm so glad I forced myself not to accept something I KNEW could be changed!!

[Cassie32591359mqck]

THANK YOU!!!!

[Cassie32591359mqck]

Exactly what I needed & worked perfectly. OMG thanks so much

[A32843730wo2t]

It Works, thank you

[jon172408716gxw]

I printed this out and followed to a T and it worked perfectly. I would just add that during the process after you enable both options and click OK there is another option at bottom of page asking if you want to add this to multiple files. This is a great feature if you have many pages of PDF files you would like the adjusted margins to be applied to at the same time. Huge time saver thanks for the intel.

[Xena1964]

Thank you so much!

[_Erik_Little_]

Thanks, however the page scaling did not produce the desired results for me.

[_Aandi_Inston_]

What is your desired result, exactly?

Aandi Inston

[crogs]

While I'm not the original poster, I'm printing four pages onto one page. One inch margins is not maximizing the size of each page thus making it that much more difficult to read. I could fit my files on to one page (duplexed) but because of the stupid one inch margin I can't adjust, it's near impossible to read without really focusing which defeats the purpose. Doesn't make any sense to not be able to adjust the print margins and take advantage of as much space on the paper as possible. Not like I'm on a screen and can just zoom in. Adjustting print margins should be basic yet they're grayed out at 1" with no way to adjust them.

[Yey12]

+1

It is insane not to be able to modify printing margins, especially when printing the area selected with Edit / Take a snapshot, which invariably stands right in the middle of the page, and no way to align it elsewhere...
Chrome can do it when printing any part of a web page, would that be so difficult to add it to Adobe Reader ?

[Arianna5F8E]

I'm having a similar issue. My online literature course requires annotations and I am printing the pages with 2 on each size to minimize waste. When I went to print, it looks like there is not enough space on the left side for me to write annotations, so I want to scale the pages down a little or change the margins. I am assuming Adobe has changed a lot since the OP made this post as now there are ways to edit the text itself, but the margins are locked under page setup when I go to print.

[_Erik_Little_]

Currently the document displays with 2" margins all the way around(left,right,top,bottom). I would like to set the margins to 0.75"-1.0" all the way around.

The current settings leaves so much paper blank that I will use more paper than is necessary. So instead of printing 835 pages I could print 635 pages which as you can see saves 200 pages, and if I print duplex this cuts the number of pages in half. I do this for manuals and training materials. I like to have something I can touch when I read/study and to make notes on.

Is it possible to delete an image that is on every page without going to every page?

[_Aandi_Inston_]

>Currently the document displays with 2" margins all the way around(left,right,top,bottom). I would like to set the margins to 0.75"-1.0" all the way around.

You can reduce the margins by cropping the page. With some trickery
you could enlarge the content to fit.,
>
>So instead of printing 835 pages I could print 635 pages which as you can see saves 200 pages

This is based on a misunderstanding. A PDF is not a Word document, and
the text is not waiting to reflow if you edit it. For example if you
add a word to a line, you would shift the text up in that line. If it
doesn't fit, you must edit the next line, and so forth.

Changing margins will not affect the page count. Think of a PDF as
more like a TIFF file: if a collection of TIFF happened to contain
text, cropping them or adjusting "margin" would not change the number
of TIFF files.

Aandi Inston

[_Gloria_Mc_ · Accepted solution]

Erik,
The others have (hopefully) made it clear to you that Acrobat is not a word processing or document layout program; (as Geo said) it's a document display program. If you have access to the source file from which the PDF was created, then change the margins in that file.

If no source, then -- at the risk of stating the obvious -- if you are trying to conserve paper, is the font of the document large enough that you could print two (cropped) pages of your document per physical page? That is an option for many printers. Also, printing two-sided. Just look at your printer's properties - hopefully you will find one or both of these options.

--GMc

[crogs]

Sorry, but asking for printing options is not a function of a "word processor". But thanks for coming off as belittling.

Something as basic as wanting to conserve paper and fit more than one page on a sheet shouldn't be met with a difficult task. And print setting don't offer the flexibility to do something like booklet printing and such.

And for the record...PDF's are documents. This is a viewer and printer. Many receive printable pdf's for and would like a little flexibility in how it prints and views. If many people are asking for something as simple as the ability to change margins, maybe the issue is you and Adobe and not the people asking for some changes to be made.

[KazooMcGoo]

Well said,crogs. 

[default28361616oh6tak]

Then why is there a "create blank page" option for creating pages from scratch?  It IS a document creation tool as well.

[_Erik_Little_]

Gloria Mc,

Obviously if I had the original file I wouldn't be asking this question. I realized from the beginning that Adobe Acrobat is not a "Word Processing" application, however, I thought that just maybe Adobe in their infinite wisdom would have a similar feature as the one that I desire.

Regards,
Erik

[_Aandi_Inston_]

There is no similar feature, and nothing even remotely like it,
because this is the sort of feature you find in Word processors. The
fact that Acrobat isn't like a word processor isn't a lack of
features; it's just doing a different job.

I don't think you've taken on my point about TIFF files. You couldn't
do it with TIFF files, you can't do it with PDF files, for very much
the same reason.

Aandi Inston

[_Erik_Little_]

Aandi,

I understand what you are saying about PDF's being like an image. If I can determine where I want to place an image I should also be able to determine the boundaries ie. border, margins of where those images could be through out the entire document. That is all I am saying. I get the concept of a tiff image and that PDF's are similar to them but lets face it sometimes we get PDF files that waste space and we don't have the original file to modify the margins but we should be able to set these "margins" or "borders" more to our personal desires. Since I cannot do this am not going to purchase Acrobat 8.1 Professional because it would be a waste of money. I can spend my personal time reformatting the exported version into something that I want.

Erik