How to scan legal size document to legal size pdf?

[haynes16B8]

I have numerous legal size pages to scan. When I scan them, Acrobat Pro writes them to letter size pdf's. How do I set Acrobat to produce legal size pages?

Alternatively, is there a way in Acrobat to force the scanned legal size into a letter size pdf?

[gary_sc]

Is it chopping off the bottom or is it making the page sufficiently small (reduced size) so it can fit on a standard letter sized page?

[haynes16B8]

What I have on each of the legal size paper is two pages from a copied book. I will work on separating the pages in the pdf later, but for now I just want to legal size scan to appear as a legal size page in the pdf. It appears as a default letter size, but is there a way to change to default size in the pdf?

Thanks.

[gary_sc]

OK, I think I know what you're doing. FWIW, if I was doing that I'd scan each page separately now during the scanning process. 

But either way, it sounds like it's an issue that your default page setup is set for letter size, not legal size.

Are you on a Mac or a PC. If you're on a Mac, you are scanning using Apple's Image Capture software. If you're scanning on a PC, you are using the scanner's software. (Acrobat, by itself, has no scanning capabilities whatsoever.)

Either way, you need to set the size/dimentions of the scanning process to be legal size, not letter size.

[haynes16B8]

Thank you. Before your reply, this worked:

1. Open Acrobat
2. Create from scanner
3. Configure presets
4. Input – choose legal size.

Now the legal scan appears as a legal size pdf page.

Next task: since this is a two page book scan, I would like to separate the two pages into one so that I have sequentially numbered pdf pages instead of two on one page.

Any suggestions?

[gary_sc]

Ummm, that's why I suggested you scan one page and then the other.

You can do this in Acrobat but it involves creating a copy of the image, take the first one and crop it down to page 1, then take the 2nd one and crop it down to page 2. (This is done from Edit Pages and note that after each crop, double-click the cropped region to set the crop.)

Etc.

Hope that helps,

[gary_sc]

Oh, one more thing: it sounds like you're doing a scan of a photocopy or something like that? If so, the OCR quality goes down on each iteration of a copy of a copy. So do not expect great results.

Good luck on that aspect.

[haynes16B8]

Thanks.

But as you can see I am a neophyte on this, but learning. But now when I open custom presents the option for legal size is now gone, and when I enter the paper size as custom, 14 in, I get this message: "The value must be between 0.5 and 11.699".

That did not appear before -- legal size was an option.

What did I do?

[gary_sc]

Well, is your scanner long enough for the entire legal sized paper to fit? I was assuming that it was becuase you didn't mention any limitation but now I have concerns. If your scanner is letter sized, you cannot scan a legal sized paper. 

However, if that is the case, than scanning one page then the other (on each legal sized sheet) is your best way forward.

Thank you for letting me know your scanning background, it does help me to know what your background is. Even though you are scanning a photocopy (?) or something, do scan at at least 300ppi. Also, here's a blog I wrote for Adobe that gives some extra information about scanning documents:

http://photosbycoyne.com/Gary's_Help/Scanning/clean-scanning.html

[haynes16B8]

Here is the puzzle. After I reset the "configure presets" where legal size was an option, I did successfully scan several legal sized pages with the letter sized scanner using the automatic feed, and they worked.

But later, the legal size option disappeared, and I got a message as I noted.

What is going on?

And thanks for your help.

[gary_sc]

"Automatic feed?" 

Is this a bulk document scanner or a flatbed scanner?

I did use a bulk document scanner a number of years ago for several weeks but not since. I cannnot remember the specifics of how to set page size in that. As I recall, it was fairly automatic. If I put in a bunch of 8" tall documents, it gave me 8" tall PDFs. This was with a FujiScan.

What brand and what model scanner are you using?

[haynes16B8]

It is a Dell all-in-one 1600n. The puzzle is why I was able to choose legal size for input and output, but now cannot.

[gary_sc]

I looked it up and it should be able to work with legal pages.

But since I've never even seen one of these I'm at a loss as to help you on that.

I hope I've helped you as much as I can, I can't think of anything else I can help with.