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

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Dimitri,

That is super - a simple command.

I just wish the folks at Adobe would do the same for those doing printouts.  When you are dealing with historical documents, many taken from microfilm, generally there is no consideration as to binding margins.  If one wants to wax philosophical on this, while technology changes ever so rapidly, one thing that is always viewable is the printed page or photo.  A classic exanple of technological change is sound recording.  We started out with cylinders.  Next came records, first 78 rpm, then 45 rpm for individual songs and 33 rpm for longer pieces.  Casette tapes and 8-track tapes were next, followed by CD's.  Now we have mpegs.  The conundrum was exemplified in one of the early Superman movies, wherein the history of Krypton was recorded on green crystals.  Technology is constantly changing, which compromises the ability to play back what has been recorded in the past.  At the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD, some of the researchers' copies of motion pictures are on antique 1" Beta tapes.  The machines to play these, antiques in and of themselves, are in terrible shape.  The primary copies, however, are still on film, although one wonders how long these, too, will last.  I presume that these are stored under refrigeration.

We can see the issue in condensed time with the development of computer operating systems and software.  While Microsoft has generally attempted to provide retroactivity, a document written in the newer versions of Office may be a .docx, whereas older software doesn't recognize this.  Fortunately, most friends are willing to downgrade their copies so I can read them.  Support for Windows XP will eventually vanish.  While this OS can continue to be used by those that have it, replacing peripherals such as scanners and printers may make this problematic.

But, actual photos and printed pages are readable with the Mark 1 eyeball, regardless of how they are produced.

Regards,

Richard

[swsmall]

Richard,

Adobe addressed a lot of what you're talking about 7 years ago in Acrobat 6 with the addition of the PDF/A standard for archiving.  Of course, the document author has to save the file as PDF/A, and this means the file has to meet that criteria.  This 'archiving' format was requested by, among many others, the Library of Congress, and so these documents need to be able to be read in their original format for 100 years or until the end of the republic, which ever comes first.  The ability to read these documents does not belong to Adobe, Acrobat or the Reader to maintain, but instead, the consumer that desires to view these documents must have a system that runs software that can view these files.  While Adobe may currently honor and support this standard, I don't believe it is their responsiblity (nor should it be) to add definition to it.

I believe that Microsoft was represented at the standards committee hearings while the format arguments were being made, but for better or for worse the committee felt that PDF was a more qualified format.  I believe this is because, in part, of what Aandi Inston explained way way back at the top of this thread; Word is a word processing application, and Acrobat/Reader is a document viewing program.  Over the years, many many features have been added to give a document author much more creative control over a PDF, but really, some responsibility lies in the hands of the author; whether or not this is the original author, or a person who now possesses an original or a copy of the document, and now wants that document to be different.

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Steve,

So, Adobe did address this issue in the past.  You mention a PDF/A standard.  How does one translate this into usable instructions utilizing Acrobat 8, or am I mixing apples and oranges?

I can easily understand why the Library of Congress would want this feature.  A lot of documentation appears on microfilm.  I've been receiving a fair number of documents in pdf format that are currently stored on microfilm.  As you note, the document pages are in image form, not machine readable text.  Reviewing a large document in pdf form is not as easy as reviewing the printed document, where access to individual pages is inherently easier.  The LoC may, as I have been, concerned about rapidly changing technology where one system of storage might become obsolete in the future.

Regards,

Richard

[D_Ben]

1-17-2011  7 PM PT

I've tried some of the solutions offered, but Pro 10 seems to have negated them.  Any ideas for Pro 10?

Adobe:  Why haven't one of the company reps jumped into this discussion?

Additionally, my college pdf's are in 14 pt font, and there appears to be no way to reduce them.

[D_Ben]

1-17-2011  8:34 PM PT

I found a workaround using both Acrobat Pro 10 and my HP 1518ni printer. Clumsy and slow, but it works.  I had to print a pdf from my teacher which had a combination of portrait and landscape pages.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to change the 14 point font.    Here is the sequence:

Acrobat Pro 10:

  All of the pages will have to be rotated 180 degrees so the 95% reduction (in the printer) will "expand" the left side.  Otherwise, the left margin remains

    intact, and the right one shrinks.

  Determine the page numbers of the portait pages, as those will be entered in the following step.

  In the toolbar click on the "Rotate page" icon.  It is the second one from the right, and has a yellow reverse arrow. The "Roate Pages" dialog box opens.

  Click on the radio button "Pages", and enter the page numbers to be printed.

  Click "OK".  Now go to the printer setup, which has to be done only once for this particular printing job.

HP 1518ni:

  In Pro 10, click on the printer icon, which opens the "Print" page.

  Click on "Properties" in the upper right area, which opens the "Document Properties" page.

  Click on "Effects".

  Click on the radio button "% of actual size:"  After clicking on "100", I changed it to "95".

  NOTE:  The "Rotate" area (6th line down) offers two selection boxes: "Even and Odd Pages" and ""Portrait Pages". Their dropdown menus list more

    selections.  I found that changing the "Portrait Pages" did not have an effect on my landscape pdf pages.  (I forgot to change it once.)

  Click on "OK", which returns to the "Printer" page in Acrobat Pro 10.

Acrobat Pro 10 Printer page:

  Click on the appropriate radio button under "Print Range".  In my case, I had to first process the portrait pages, and then the landscape ones.

NOTE: After finishing the print job, don't forget to change the printer setting from "95%" back to 100 by clicking on the button "Actual size".

Hope this helps!  Adobe--are you listening?  PDF's have become the de facto method of communicating, and since pages must be printed for any number of reasons, it makes sense to fix this issue.  The pdf's contents are not at risk of being modified--only the way they are printed.

[Luvslajolla]

I found this forum in response to a query about a problem that I am having.  When I print my PDF file, margins are fine.  Then I duplex print, and the image seems to be shrunk, with wider margins.  As it is a tri-fold brochure, this is a real problem.  Any ideas what might be going on?  For now I will just print a bunch of page 1s, then put em back inthe printer for page 2.  The thing that I find really frustrating is that it worked fine on duplex a few weeks ago.  Must have set something wrong...

[TechPorVida]

I agree, PDF is more commonly used as an active review tool.   We  need to change the margins of pdfs coming from different sources and versions.  We currently use 8.0 Standard, and receive 9.0X.  We create call-outs to indicate proposed changes.  When the received pdf has only .5 margins, the call-outs cover the text.  We purchased "Very PDF" which is not working well for us.  Since using Very PDF, we have problems with the documents "timing out" and not saving to our Interwoven Document Management System.  The users often loose changes when PDF freezes.

By the way, moving to 9.0 Pro made the situation worse.

Based on the contents of the posts, this is the first time I finally see a way to shrink the margins natively (i.e., without Very PDF).  It's cumbersome,  Now I'm going to try to locate someone that can help us "macro" these steps so I don't have to rely on 3rd party vendors who don't offer support.  Feel my pain!

If anyone can chime in on recommending someone to write the macro, I'd appreciate it.

[DimitriM]

Hi TechPorVida,

Did you give the previously mentioned free automation tool "Resize Pages Tool" a try?  You can download it at-

http://www.pdfscripting.com/public/65.cfm

(Scroll down in the list for the one titled "Resize Pages Tool").

Hope this helps,

Dimitri

www.windjack.com

www.pdfscripting.com

[TechPorVida]

I did and its great. I'll need to reviewe the script with a developer at

Interwoven to make sure it can't interfere with the Adobe/FileSite

integration (unless you know the answer.) I'm purchasing an annual

subscription to PDFScripting. The firm name is King, Holmes, Paterno &

Berliner. That'll be me. Can't thank you enough, this issue has been an

elusive sucker for a while.

[kenjunior08]

Hate to promote some non-adobe product but *THE BEST* solution is a paid application called Quite Imposing, simple plug in that works.  NO, its not cheap but if you need to manipulate .pdf documents on a regular basis, this software will completely recreate (in a good way) the way you manage .pdf documents.  I cannot imagine trying to photoshop a .pdf just to shove the document .125 inches in any direction.  They do have a trial version of it.

My thoughts, if you have someone that versed in Photoshop they are netting a decent salary, stop wasting their time and save the wasted salary, buy QI once and move on.

I have no connections, ties, or any other gains to the company, just seen the software in action, truely amazing stuff.

I apologize about the promotion of non-adobe application but this is really what should be put into adobe out of the box!

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Ken,

It looks like you also left me a PM on the Adobe forum. Where do you buy

this software?

Regards,

Richard

[kenjunior08]

Google it. Direct from company, they are not in US.

[~graffiti]

kenjunior08 wrote:

I apologize about the promotion of non-adobe application but this is really what should be put into adobe out of the box!

No worries. QI is a well known product around here (plus you need Acrobat to run it) and they've had someone from their company that used to visit here frequently that was very helpful.

[Little_Black_Girl]

I'm late coming across this question but it seems like it's on-going so I'll add my simple solution.

If I'm understanding you correctly, the problem is that when you print to PDF from other applications, the PDF's margins are too wide and "paper is wasted" when printing multiple page documents.

To avoid cropping, rotating, resizing, etc., go to Print, select the "Adobe PDF Settings" tab, and under the "default settings" option, select "Oversized Pages", then click "OK".

Now when you print to letter-sized paper, the margins will be wider and you will not have to adjust % and crop pages.

[Jameshawrd]

A PDF file is the one which can be easily accessed on any system irrespective of its configuration. You can improve the form of a PDF file by changing and customizing the margins, page size, page layout and the presentation of the content. u can easily crop the page in edit option but for more precise answer

http://www.techyv.com/questions/why-does-pdf-not-print-same-size-original

[Kh8ch]

It must exist in previous versions too, but in Adobe X (ver 10) you can choose "Multiple Pages" or "Booklet printing" in the drop down box for Page Scaling when you have the Print dialog box open. This will print "2-pages-per-sheet" without the extra margin padding. You just need to take care that the printer thinks it is printing "Landscape" if you're printing 2 "Portraits" per page and vice-versa. The printer should still only print "1 page per sheet" and set to duplex (especially for booklet printing).

[SilentFactor]

I recently upgraded to "Acrobat XI Pro" and still couldn't figure out how to keep the text further away from the edge of a page. Actually, how to create a margin.

I am a long term user of "FinePrint" and its mate "PDF Factory Pro" and with that team onboard it was rather easy to create a PDF with a nice margin.

These programs are actually printer drivers; graphical printer drivers I guess.

It has to be said that when increasing the Binding margin in "FinePrint" the whole page scaled a little bit down. Not to an extend that it was an issue.

As my PDF (a conversion from an EPUB eBook) was a book, I Extracted in "Acrobat XI Pro" the original cover of the book from the PDF-with-the-tiny-margins.

Next I 'printed' the file to "FinePrint". There I adjusted the Binding margin and "printed" further on to "PDF Factory Pro".

In "PDF Factory Pro" I saved the file as a PDF. That file I opened next in "Acrobat XI Pro" where I replaced the now somewhat squeezed cover of the book with the one I had saved from the original PDF. All sorted.

"FinePrint" is cultural-aware: it can work with both documents that flip from right-to-left as well as those that flip from left-to-right.

In my case the outcome worked for me in one go. "FinePrint" can adjust the Binding margin and that means either on the left or on the right side of the page.

I guess if you would need to resize significantly both the left and the right margins you may have to repeat the production process a second time.

After 1 'pass' I didn't notice any decrease of the quality; the text stayed sharp etc.

Hope this information is useful to someone. Like to the programmers of Acrobat....

Have a great day.

[AzonDee]

Changing Margins is a doddle with the

"Quite Imposing Plus"

Plug-In for Acrobat.

Here are the Settings I used to fix a PDF that had no Margins:

From the "Imposition Control Panel" select "Step and repeat"

(I created a preset called "MARGINS" to easily repeat the task again)

Just click on

"Finish"

and in a couple of seconds

you have a perfect PDF with the Margins you desire!

[D_Ben]

6-17-2015:  "If the reply above answers your question, please take a moment to mark this answer as correct by visiting: https://forums.adobe.com/message/7652785#7652785 and clicking ‘Correct’ below the answer."

Unfortunately, there was no "Correct" to click on. 

Azon's answer was through and easy to follow.  Thank you!

[kimw36415508]

Hello,

I have a similar problem and have read this thread in full, but can't work out how to fix it. Can anyone help?

I have a PDF made up of multiple sections. Some sections have page margins that are too narrow; other sections have page margins that are perfect as they are. I want to increase the page margins just of certain sections, and I need to make this change in the PDF itself. All pages are A4.

I need to make these changes within the PDF itself, as this will later be printed by someone else (on A4 paper), along with lots of other PDFs. This batch printing will be done with the mode 'Print actual size' (not 'fit to scale'), to be consistent with the other PDFs.

I'm using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro.

Huge thanks to anyone who can help!

Kim

[NWTrillium]

Hello Kim,

I just came back to this forum and found that you had posted. What I have resolved to to is this. I use PowerPoint 2013 and then turn them into pdfs. The borders will change from a PP to a pdf and so I actually print up the pdf and measure all the sides by 16ths of an inch. I will make the border the same by adjusting the PP by .01 increments on all the sides to get the desired border around all the sides. After awhile I get a feel for it. Usually 1/16" + .04  I may have to print it up few times before I have got the border even on all sides. I print to actual size too since so many out there may not have the ability to select fit to page. This way it may be closer to what I am printing out. This may or may not help you but might give you clues how you may want to figure a work around.

[susannej91230390]

I totally understand your frustration with the lack of margin set up in Adobe Acrobat pdf files.  When I create a booklet in either Word or Publisher I make sure the margins are very narrow but Adobe changes them and I cannot make them print any narrower.  Why can't Acrobat just leave the margins as they are created?

[NWTrillium]

I just reread my reply and realized it had so my errors in it. I edited just now so it makes more sense : /  Yes I was floored about the whole margin issue when I discovered it. I tried publisher and word but use PP since it allows me way more flexibility when I make digital products. When I have decorative borders I use this approach. I think you will notice that when the document compresses in pdf form some things can get wonky. I don't know if it is possible to control the compression to the point where it is exactly the same, something has got to give in the process. I know my clipart doesn't hold at 300dpi when converted to pdf.

Also their viewer is not always exact compared to what prints out too. Many times things will look a little distorted on the pdf but it will print up fine. I don't think this is a priority with Adobe. I get frustrated with their approach on many things. It is what it is. 

[Dov Isaacs]

Deanne Broughton and Susanne Jones,

To be very clear, nothing in Acrobat changes the margins that you have setup in you Office documents. The entire layout is passed to Acrobat for creation of PDF (either via PDFMaker or the AdobePDF PostScript Printer Driver instance) by the Office applications and Acrobat makes no changes to what is passed to it.

With regards to clipart not holding to 300dpi, there can be two issues at play here. First, you need to be careful which joboptions you specify. The Standard joboptions do downsample raster images to 150 dpi. You should consider using the High Quality Print joboptions instead. Secondly and more importantly, just because raster images that you import into a Microsoft Office document are 300 dpi does not mean that Office maintains the full resolution. Depending upon the version of Microsoft Office you are running and the individual applications therein, images may be automatically downsampled when imported or output. Check the preferences for each of the programs. Those options are freak'in scary and can do serious output quality damage if not changed to something more reasonable!!!

I suspect that most of your issues are really with Microsoft. There is nothing that Adobe can do once the fully formatted content is passed to us by these applications!

               - Dov

[NWTrillium]

Thank you Dov.

Well from a user's point of view I just know that when I print from a PP I get one border and when I covert it to pdf I get a completely different border when I print it. In PP I do select do not compress graphics for what it is worth. I have no idea how much that helps.

I know if I try to print to adobe printer my hyperlinked images and text is lost and have to use Save to Pdf to keep the links in place. I find it odd that regular links in the same document will hold onto the link but the hyperlinked images and text don't. It seems to this user it is inconsistent from my end.

I was also having problems with the designer fonts, they weren't translating when converting to pdfs. It may be a bad hand off from MS but how is the users to know. I think I reasonably assumed that if I want to turn a document into a pdf it will look the same way and the fonts would be preserved. But with editing pdf I guess Acrobat now reads the fonts and it it doesn't align with it's list it goes BOING. Yes there are so many settings I have no idea what they all do and many times what I am doing is not what manuals address. For instance making printables with PP. 

Well I do lock my pdfs and prior to that I always check the box to print to high resolution, but not sure the dpi with the graphics have been preserved or to what degree from changing the settings in both PP and the pdf. I recently tried to check to see if there was a way to see if the graphics still held onto the 300dpi in the pdf but couldn't find anything that would show me that. Is there a way to check this?

I use PP 2013 with Win7 64 bit Ultimate. Yes the settings are scary for sure and I have had to start making notes of what they are so I can refer back to them since I keep forgetting why I am not doing this or that now since I discovered this or that doesn't work well. I know there are a lot of us doing the same thing I am but no place for us to go to get best ways on this. I get different advice from so called experts who don't really get what I am doing and then I end up back tracking and having to redo things since now I realized all too late my hyperlinks don't work with Print to Adobe. I think they can hear me screaming all the way to the east coast when I discover these things out. 

I wish MS and Adobe would be more on the same page with this stuff since users are caught in the mucky middle. I am not about to be a graphics designer but still need to do better desktop publishing with PP 2013 and Acrobat XI. Better yet I wish Siri was in my PP and Adobe and I could just tell her to figure it out and make it for me ; ) 

But since MS is not translating entirely well with Acrobat I figured out my work around with printing and measuring and adjusting the graphics to create an even boarder and it works. So yes I have PP not compressing graphics and yes I have high resolution for pdf, it doesn't help the border issue that is why the work around.

If you have any others suggestions, please share since I would like to produce the best possible pdfs for my buyers.