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_Erik_Little_
Participant
December 18, 2007
Answered

How to change Margins in PDF?

  • December 18, 2007
  • 41 replies
  • 998580 views

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

    Correct answer CtDave

    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...

    41 replies

    Show previous replies
    A
    ahmedcoyou
    Participant
    November 11, 2016

    Dear guys,

    I faced a similar problem, I had an eBook that had Big margins that waste a lot of space and make the print look small, I tried to use actual scale when printing it, but as the margins where not equally the same on each side, this option didn't help a lot.

    I wanted something like a 'crop' for each and every 400+ pages of this unique eBook!

    I found a way, drop Adobe PDF and go for Foxit Phantom PDF. It is a way better with tons of feature that basically you can do whatever you want with your PDF file, cut add or deleted specific pages, edit text, change text re-flow, exactly as you do it with MS word!!!

    Also you can crop all of you pages in no time, then print the new file exactly as you wanted.

    I highly recommend it to any one who want more than a simple PDF reader.

    D
    DaddySam
    Participant
    September 19, 2016

    You can decrease margins: Open the document in pdf & use the "Extract" Function

    You can increase margins all around in a limited way: Open the document in pdf and print to pdf then change the scaling

    susannej91230390
    susannej91230390
    Participant
    March 9, 2016

    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?

    N
    NWTrillium
    Participating Frequently
    March 9, 2016

    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
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    March 9, 2016

    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

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    kimw36415508
    kimw36415508
    Participant
    July 1, 2015

    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

    N
    NWTrillium
    Participating Frequently
    March 4, 2016

    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.

    AzonDee
    AzonDee
    Participant
    June 17, 2015

    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
    D Ben
    Participating Frequently
    June 17, 2015

    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!

    S
    SilentFactor
    Participant
    February 25, 2015

    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.

      K
      Kh8ch
      Participant
      December 4, 2011

      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).

      J
      Jameshawrd
      Participant
      October 24, 2011

      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

      L
      Little_Black_Girl
      Participant
      October 11, 2011

      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.

      K
      kenjunior08
      Participant
      June 17, 2011

      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!

      A
      Anonymous
      June 17, 2011

      Dear Ken,

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

      this software?

      Regards,

      Richard

      K
      kenjunior08
      Participant
      June 17, 2011

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

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