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

[dexia777]

I had the same problem with margins when I created a PDF from a PowerPoint file.  It kept shrinking the entire page, leaving larger margins than my original file.  But now I just created a PDF from a PowerPoint file with OK margins.  This may sound overly simple, but I selected Print and just checked the box "Scale to fit paper", and it worked fine.  The PDF now has the same margins as my original.

[JSiqvel]

I am trying to brochure print a letter sized MSWord Created doc exported to Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 with 1/2 to 1/4 inch margins. The pre-set for brochure print top and bottom margins in Acrobat appears to be 1". The Page Setup dialog box Margins setting is there, but greyed out, so not accessible to modification.

The problem is the Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 software.

Adobe, will you please fix the software so that margins can be changed when Brochure Print is the selected option.

Thanks ever so much. 

[defaultl37lc3z52car]

Thank you! I have been searching and searching, and finally found your comment.

[shawnmitchell]

Hi,

I have a related question.  I have a PDF file that has very, very tight left and right margins.  I don't want to print the file, but I would like to be able to have visually pleasing margins while reading it in Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended.

I'd be happy even to be able to change the background color of the non-page area to white.  I can change the background color to white on Full Screen display, but not on regular display. 

Can anyone give me some tips on making the left/right margins appear wider?

Thanks in advance!

[CtDave · Accepted solution]

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...

[shawnmitchell]

Thanks Dave, that was exactly what I needed.

[Ryegon]

Hmm I know this post is already outdated but I came across this problem just recently. Cropping zooming resizing is a bit crappy. Here's what I've found out / figured out:

If you have Adobe Photoshop, go ahead and open your PDF file from there. Then try and print it there. You can adjust a lot like margins scale size etc without losing your PDF quality. Print-out is as clear as the original

[SuperAdeel]

Hello,

Please guide me how to increase 1/2 inch margin on the left side and reduce the same margin on the right side of Adobe Reader document, i need this for binding purposes.

Thanks.

[Bill12]

You can not do anything with Reader. There may be some options in your printer dialog for your printer, but there is nothing you can do with Reader. More questions on Reader should be asked in the Reader forum.

[Richard_Eger]

Hi all,

My first post on the Adobe forums.

I've read the entries so far and none seem to hit the nail on the head.

My issue is that I have a fair number of documents as strung together .pdf's and I'd like to print out each document with a binding margin on the left, typically a .75" margin.  This should have been a slam dunk command, but, alas, I can't find it.  Some pages vary in size and I would simply print to fit an 8-1/2" x 11" page, shrinking the original to allow for the .75" binding margin.

So far, I've had to open each page in Photoshop Elements 6, add the requisite margin, then save it as an individual page, later restringing the document together.  When you get to documents exceeding 100 pages, this is an insane waste of my time and there ought to be a command to take care of this enmass.

As info, I am using Acrobat 8.

Regards,

Richard

[Bill12]

Sounds like you have 2 steps that are needed. First, get all the pages to the same size (printing to a new PDF with the expand to fit will do this). After you get the same size pages, then use the crop tool to setup the margins. You may want to do the first print to a custom size corresponding to the size without the left margin. These are only ideas, not necessarily the best solution. The optimal solution is to fix the margins in the original document before make the PDF.

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Bill,

Okay, I got through step 1.  Thanks for your guidance.  Step 2, however, is problematic.  Using the crop tool, that is literally all I can achieve, i.e., to crop the document.  What I want to do is to add a .75" margin on the left, meaning that the printed original will now be constrained to a 7.75" width space on the right side of each 8.5" x 11" page, with the proportions constrained, meaning that it will also reduce in the long dimension proportionately.

Didling a bit further, I tried again going to print.  I made the Printer "Adobe pdf" as before.  I then went to Properties, then to Default Settings > Edit.  At the bottom is Default Page Size.  At this point, it looked like I could change the page size to 7.75" x 11.0".  It then wanted to save this under Settings titling the file Standard[1].joboptions.  This folder is really buried down in the weeds and I chickened out, afraid I'd never be able to change it back, i.e., find my way to it.  I'm not sure what I will achieve nor whether the original page will be shown to the right or centered once printed, if that.  I'd appreciate some guidance (and hand holding).  I'm a bit leary of changing a major default setting and not be able to undo it for documents with which I don't need the binding margin.

I apologize for the tight spacing of this message, but don't know how to adjust it.

Regards,

Richard

[Bill12]

This may not be optimal, but may meet your needs. Print your PDF to the Adobe PDF printer AFTER setting the printer properties>General>Advanced>scaling to maybe 80% or so. You can play around with calculations to what might be a good percent for the end result -- I randomly selected 75% and turned off shrink and expand to fit page. You might also select a custom page size that when scaled and cropped, would include within it the letter or A4 size that you might want for the final. Then print the PDF to a new one. In the new one, use the crop to get the top, right, and bottom margins back to where you want them. Print the result. It may be that you can try printing to another PDF and seeing how the results go (I did this with the expand to fit and got a page with a large left margin and narrow top, bottom, and right margins. These checks might include the expand to fit option and such.

If you spend a little time with measurements and such, you might find good %s to use for the print and the cropping. At least this is an alternative to try to get what you want. It worked for me in AA5 on this machine. Hope my scenario makes sense. I started out with TBRL of .75,.5,.5,.5 margins in. After 75% print and a crop of TBRL of 1.5,1.4,.36,.128 in I had about TBRL of .5, .3, 1.1, and .25 in margins. I printed to a new page with expand to fit. The end result was TBRL of 1.1, .9, 1.3, .25 in margins approximately. A better test would have been to have created a box for the margins initially and played with the scaling to get there. If you want alternating print margins, you would need to crop the even and odd pages separately.

I think that once you have gone through the process and figured out the steps and proper scalings and croppings, then it should be rather easy to do. I would test on a short document, but you should be able to do it on a large document after you set the process. You may lose some resolution and such, but at least you have your print margins. Long way to get there. I figured I would go through the process since folks ask about margins periodically. Unfortunately you can not put in negative cropping (at least in AA5 -- did not try it on AA7, 8, or 9 on my other machines), or the process would have just gotten easier.

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Bill,

Thank you for taking so much time with this.

I think I see what you are trying to do.  Essentially, if I read you correctly, you are pre-shrinking the document, then cropping back to keep a left hand margin.  I don't know what you mean by AA5, AA6, etc.  Please explain.

I do use Internet Explorer and Microsoft, as far as I'm concerned, really blundered when they introduced shrink to fit with IE 6.  It wasn't until they got to IE 8 that they provided a way to shut it off.  With it on, e-mail with large photo attachments would end up with tiny print when printed off.

Similarly, Adobe seems to have had a blind eye to the binding margin issue, which really should have been included as a simple command in Acrobat, or even in Acrobat Reader.

I won't be able to try your recommendations until tomorrow.  If I get stuck, I'll come back for more help.  Thanks for all of your efforts to assist me (and likely others) to find a work around for this issue.

Regards,

Richard

[Bill12]

AA5 etc are the Acrobat versions (not subversions) such as Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 (typically the latest versions). I understand your interest in a print margin, but as many others have said that is not really what Acrobat was designed for. It was designed as a viewer/creator in which an original can be viewed. However, many things folks wish to do can be done after a fair amount of fiddling, though not always the best results. For your case, it is probably not a bad solution.

I can create a document with a border margin showing (could probably use printer marks also) to demonstrate the process. If you have what your current margins and page size are, along with the new margin (I did not go back and check for any statement about them), I can probably repeat the process and post the examples.

[DimitriM]

Hi Richard,

For your step number two you may want to look at our free automation tool "Resize Pages Tool" at-

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

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

Step number 1 could aslo be solved with a custom automation tool for scaling all the pages at once, and could be combined for both steps into one custom tool. If this is something you do repeatedly and isn't a one time job, it may be worth getting such a tool developed.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri Munkirs

WindJack Solutions

www.windjack.com

www.pdfscripting.com

[uvbogden]

Bill@VT  wrote

Sounds like you have 2 steps that are needed. First, get all the pages to the same size (printing to a new PDF with the expand to fit will do this). After you get the same size pages, then use the crop tool to setup the margins. You may want to do the first print to a custom size corresponding to the size without the left margin. These are only ideas, not necessarily the best solution. The optimal solution is to fix the margins in the original document before make the PDF.

Bill, the problem with using the printer to size the document for proper margins does not get you an electronic document with the margins adjusted. If you're dealing with an existing document and the text is laid down the length of the page and leaving 2" margins on each side

[uvbogden]

Wide margins on either side and a column down the middle of text. The text is usually closely fitting the top and bottom of the page. So if you crop the left and right sides you'll end up with a long, narrow page which Acrobat redoes, putting back wide margins on the sides so everything fits on the 8.5" X 11" letter-size paper. It's a partial but not entirely satisfactory fix. You can do better if you're able to move text in tighter formation towards the middle of the page to get more cropping off the top and bottom. Redults are semi-OK.

You can go through the document in EDIT mode and adjust all the text boxes to the proper margins. You can get more cropable space if you Select All and change to a smaller or more narrow font that will shrink your text boxes. Another way is to convert your pdf to a png or jpg. Then using Paint.NET, you load your 8.5" X 11" white rectangle png into Paint.NET, under Layers, select import layer from file. The files are the pages that are now png photos. The file turns up in the upper left hand corner, quite small, and you drag the dots to enlarge/shrink the page, and change it so that the text column is shorter than before and wider--you can crop and resize the page until it's an 8.5" X11" page that has perfect margins all around. Then you save it with Paint.NET, and then convert the png back to a pdf and combine the pages.

The way Adobe recommends is to export to word, make your formatting changes then convert it back to pdf if you wish. The problem is, when you change them from pdf to word, the result is often somewhat different in places and in what you have as a word document, some of the ridgid formatting carries over from the pdf to the new word doc and when you try to fix the text, some of it won't move where it's supposed to, and it's difficult (onery really) to edit. So what we need is a Format Bar where we can set margins, the size of headers and footers, and something to make the text that's running down the center of the page to re-wrap itself to the new margins, instead of having to do this by hand.

None of these methods are satisfactory. They take too much time and persistent focus for Adobe consumers, while it wouldn't take much effort on the part of ADOBE to fix Acrobat and open up new worlds for the consumers.

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Bill and Dimitri,

I am not sure Bill whether or not you are suggesting I send you a sample of what I have to play with.  Some are more complicated than others.  For instance, in some extreme cases, not only are the originals of different size, but some are rotated 90°.  The end objective is to get them all printed on 8.5" x 11" paper with a .75" binding margin.  Generally, those that are rotated 90° will print out correctly oriented.

As for what Acrobat was designed to do, I understand your point Bill, but clearly people print out pdf's, as witness the plethora of government documents on pdf from the IRS.  I find the lack of a tool for printing out documents with acceptable binding margins equal to racing a horse with blinders on.  When I started my inquiry, I figured the tool was there, but I just didn't know how to access it.

Dimitri, I'm not sure how locking down a corner of a page works.  Care to explain?

I'd be happy to provide a sample via e-mail if either of you wants to try it.

In the meantime, I'll try following up on your instructions, Bill.

Regards,

Richard

[DimitriM]

Hi Richard,

If you have downloaded the tool, in the graphic labeled "Anchor" on the right side of the dialog you select an anchor for one area of the document by clicking in one of the boxes. That will be the point which won't change while the rest of the page grows or shrinks (the corresponding arrows shown indicate the direction too) You need to select "Custom" size in the "New Size" pulldown window in that same dialog and enter the dimensions for width and height plus choose Units, which in your case would be inches.

If you create a test document a play around with the different settings it should become clear how it works.

Hope that helps,

Dimitri

WindJack Solutions, Inc

www.windjack.com

www.pdfscripting.com

[Bill12]

The tool Dimitri suggested looks like a good alternative. You may still have problems with having to rotate pages and pages of different sizes. You might want to rotate all that need rotating from Document>Rotate Pages and print to a PDF of a desired size and select to fit page. Then use Dimitri's too that is probably simpler. You have several different issues, the margin only being one and Dimitri's tool looks ideal for the margins.

[Richard_Eger]

Dear Bill and Dimitri,

Thank you for your additional sage counsel.

I think I will try your approach first, Bill.  While perhaps a bit of artistic perfectionism, My desire would be to center the resulting image reduction top and bottom, whereas your approach Dimitri would lock it either toward the top or the bottom, although, admittedly, that's a really icing on the cake issue.  And, it may turn out that, say, locking at the top, might not be a bad idea.  If I recall correctly, fit to page does center the page in both directions.

As for pre-rotating the errant rotated pages, these documents are strung together and I'm not sure how one goes about rotating individual pages within the string.  To be honest, I've only been working them in Photoshop Elements 6, adding the margin there, which breaks them into individual pdf's, which I later re-string.  My guess is that there is likely a command within Acrobat to do this while retaining the integrity of the string.

Which then brings up another classic question.  While stringing together individual pdf's is straight forward, de-stringing them enmass is something I don't know how to do.  Can either of you offer a suggestion as to how this can be done?

I am also hoping that, while my questions pertain to my specific needs, others viewing this instructional discussion will also benefit.

Regards,

Richard

[DimitriM]

Hi Richard,

Try menu item Document -> Extract Pages, then choose a page range and check the box "Extract Pages as Separate Files." You'll also need to specify a folder location for the output.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri

WindJack Solutions

www.windjack.com

www.pdfscripting.com

[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.