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R
RatherBWriting
Participant
December 15, 2023
Question

must have page size 6X9

  • December 15, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 3276 views

I have Adobe Acrobat 10 and Win10 on my laptop.  I've tried absolutely everything, and cannot find a way to change the pdf of my new book from 8.5X11 inches to 6X9 inches.  Help!  Nothing works.   It's not negotiable; the book needs to be 6X9 inches.  I keep getting the same dialog box which opens and lets me type in a new page size, so I enter 6X9, click on all pages, and then it tells me that it cannot change to a smaller page size.  I've clicked on every option within the software and can't see a way that works.  It is ridiculous that this is so hard. 

 

Should I create a blank pdf file - is there a way to set the page size before there is any text in the file?  Then maybe I could copy my entire book (gasp) and plunk it down in the new blank pdf file??

 

Any help will be so gratefully appreciated!

 

RatherBWriting

    3 replies

    R
    RatherBWritingAuthor
    Participant
    December 23, 2023

    Solved!  After wasting hours of precious time, I finally opened up the original file (which had the correct page size of 6X9") and, after adding page numbers, successfully uploaded the book to Amazon.  In the process, I learned how to insert a section break and begin numbering pages on a page that is not the first page.  It's been a journey!  Thanks to everyone who tried to help.

     

    RatherBWriting

    Luke Jennings3
    Community Expert
    Luke Jennings3Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 23, 2023

    Saving a new pdf from Word was the best option, but for future reference, you were on the right track with the preflight fixup tool.

    R
    RatherBWritingAuthor
    Participant
    December 25, 2023

    Thank you, Luke and Abambo, for taking the time to help me with this problem.  I don't know what happened to the 6X9" page size when I converted the Word file the first time into a pdf, and may never know how the page size was suddenly 8X10" when I looked at the pdf in Adobe.  Going back to the original file, I could see that it was set at 6X9".  I added a few front matter pages in Adobe after I converted it to a pdf, and that may have caused the problem (guessing, don't really know).  I've learned the hard way that absolutely everything that can be done in Word should be done in Word!  Adobe is not for editing, at least not for anything big.  Although the pre-flight tool does look promising.

     

    Thanks to everyone who tried to help me!  I have at least one more book in me (I'm writing a trilogy), so I'll be back in a year or so.  Happy holidays -

    RatherBWriting

    try67
    Community Expert
    try67Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2023

    Later versions of Acrobat can do it via the Preflight tool, but not Acrobat X.

    In your version you can do it using a script, like this (paid-for) tool I've developed:

    https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-scale-pdf-pages-non-proportionally

    But as mentioned, this is really something that should be done in the original file format, not in the PDF file.

    gary_sc
    Community Expert
    gary_scCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2023

    Since you wrote the book, you probably did not write the book in Acrobat. So, what did you use? Word? InDesign? What?

     

    It will probably be 1000 times easier to return to the application you wrote the book in, set the dimensions in that application, and then regenerate the PDF. 

     

    I hope that helps

    R
    RatherBWritingAuthor
    Participant
    December 18, 2023

    It turns out that I do have the preflight tool - all I had to do was install it.  I have Adobe Acrobat Pro version 2023.006.20380.  

     

    Could someone please tell me exactly how to change my page size from 8.5X11 to 6X9?  By bumbling around, I somehow created a query to find and fix pages that were not 6X9, which returned a result of all of my pages, but it would not fix them.  

     

    As a last result, I can go back to my Word document (which has the correct 6X9 page size) and re-create the .pdf file, but I will lose all of the little tweaks I've made. 

     

    My best guess as to what happened is this:  After importing the Word doc into Adobe to create the pdf,  I added the front matter pages - within Adobe (not in Word).  Since these were the first pages, I'm guessing that the default new page must be 8.5X11, and that reset the page size for the entire book.  

     

    Any help would be so gratefully received!  

     

    RatherBWriting 

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