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

[gkaiseril]

No, Acrobat and Reader are not like MS Word. They are page display programs. Changing the margin also changes the text wrapping and location.

But you can change the page scaling so the PDF margins fit the printer's margins in the "Print" UI.

[Erosfigilia03]

I converted a Word doc into a .pdf, but my word doc is 1/4 page and it gives me a full page in pdf.  How can I make it a 1/4 page in .pdf as well?

[_Erik_Little_]

Thanks, however the page scaling did not produce the desired results for me.

[_Aandi_Inston_]

What is your desired result, exactly?

Aandi Inston

[crogs]

While I'm not the original poster, I'm printing four pages onto one page. One inch margins is not maximizing the size of each page thus making it that much more difficult to read. I could fit my files on to one page (duplexed) but because of the stupid one inch margin I can't adjust, it's near impossible to read without really focusing which defeats the purpose. Doesn't make any sense to not be able to adjust the print margins and take advantage of as much space on the paper as possible. Not like I'm on a screen and can just zoom in. Adjustting print margins should be basic yet they're grayed out at 1" with no way to adjust them.

[Yey12]

+1

It is insane not to be able to modify printing margins, especially when printing the area selected with Edit / Take a snapshot, which invariably stands right in the middle of the page, and no way to align it elsewhere...
Chrome can do it when printing any part of a web page, would that be so difficult to add it to Adobe Reader ?

[Arianna5F8E]

I'm having a similar issue. My online literature course requires annotations and I am printing the pages with 2 on each size to minimize waste. When I went to print, it looks like there is not enough space on the left side for me to write annotations, so I want to scale the pages down a little or change the margins. I am assuming Adobe has changed a lot since the OP made this post as now there are ways to edit the text itself, but the margins are locked under page setup when I go to print.

[_Erik_Little_]

Currently the document displays with 2" margins all the way around(left,right,top,bottom). I would like to set the margins to 0.75"-1.0" all the way around.

The current settings leaves so much paper blank that I will use more paper than is necessary. So instead of printing 835 pages I could print 635 pages which as you can see saves 200 pages, and if I print duplex this cuts the number of pages in half. I do this for manuals and training materials. I like to have something I can touch when I read/study and to make notes on.

Is it possible to delete an image that is on every page without going to every page?

[_Aandi_Inston_]

>Currently the document displays with 2" margins all the way around(left,right,top,bottom). I would like to set the margins to 0.75"-1.0" all the way around.

You can reduce the margins by cropping the page. With some trickery
you could enlarge the content to fit.,
>
>So instead of printing 835 pages I could print 635 pages which as you can see saves 200 pages

This is based on a misunderstanding. A PDF is not a Word document, and
the text is not waiting to reflow if you edit it. For example if you
add a word to a line, you would shift the text up in that line. If it
doesn't fit, you must edit the next line, and so forth.

Changing margins will not affect the page count. Think of a PDF as
more like a TIFF file: if a collection of TIFF happened to contain
text, cropping them or adjusting "margin" would not change the number
of TIFF files.

Aandi Inston

[_Gloria_Mc_ · Accepted solution]

Erik,
The others have (hopefully) made it clear to you that Acrobat is not a word processing or document layout program; (as Geo said) it's a document display program. If you have access to the source file from which the PDF was created, then change the margins in that file.

If no source, then -- at the risk of stating the obvious -- if you are trying to conserve paper, is the font of the document large enough that you could print two (cropped) pages of your document per physical page? That is an option for many printers. Also, printing two-sided. Just look at your printer's properties - hopefully you will find one or both of these options.

--GMc

[_Erik_Little_]

Gloria Mc,

Obviously if I had the original file I wouldn't be asking this question. I realized from the beginning that Adobe Acrobat is not a "Word Processing" application, however, I thought that just maybe Adobe in their infinite wisdom would have a similar feature as the one that I desire.

Regards,
Erik

[_Aandi_Inston_]

There is no similar feature, and nothing even remotely like it,
because this is the sort of feature you find in Word processors. The
fact that Acrobat isn't like a word processor isn't a lack of
features; it's just doing a different job.

I don't think you've taken on my point about TIFF files. You couldn't
do it with TIFF files, you can't do it with PDF files, for very much
the same reason.

Aandi Inston

[_Erik_Little_]

Aandi,

I understand what you are saying about PDF's being like an image. If I can determine where I want to place an image I should also be able to determine the boundaries ie. border, margins of where those images could be through out the entire document. That is all I am saying. I get the concept of a tiff image and that PDF's are similar to them but lets face it sometimes we get PDF files that waste space and we don't have the original file to modify the margins but we should be able to set these "margins" or "borders" more to our personal desires. Since I cannot do this am not going to purchase Acrobat 8.1 Professional because it would be a waste of money. I can spend my personal time reformatting the exported version into something that I want.

Erik

[Bill12]

The simplest way to adjust the margins that may be what you want to do is to print the PDF to a new PDF with a shrink by a % set. You will lose and links and such with this approach, but it will give you the desired margins. There may be some other work arounds, but this one will work. I finished doing this to a bunch of abstracts last month for people who can not read directions (and yes, most of them have PhDs). I was also able to be sure the fonts got embedded that way (again, a lot do not read about embedding fonts - in the future they may simply be rejected).

I was able to do some other fixes also, but it is in general a real pain (yes I wish the folks would follow directions and I could force it with pitstop or similar online checking). Good luck.

[_MaxRalph_]

- Try open the PDF with pro 5, and go Documents and Crop page...., that's how you change the margin of the File

* The Things I do with PDF's
* MaxRalph

[_Peter_Boddy_]

Erik,

I do have a suggestion, though I don't know if it will have the desired results. There are a few plugins you could get for Acrobat that would allow you some manipulation of the pages. For example you can crop the file to remove the margins, resize the file so that it is half the size of the paper you wish to print on (or view), and join pages together so that two (or more) pages exist on one page. The plugin I use for that is called Quite Imposing Plus. Though, it's as expensive as Acrobat itself, last time I got a quote anyways. There may be free or low cost plugins that can do the same thing.

You could also check with a local printing company, they might do some manipulation/scanning, to make things fit, your mileage will vary though.

Pete

[_EdJohnston_]

I have an issue with PDF margins too. I have created a document using Excel and have the formatting so the Print function puts everything where it should be. I'm doing a special label on 3x4 Avery shipping label. I put the filename in the footer for reference. Then I then generate the PDF using PrimoPDF as an output device but it always forces the bottom margin to 1/2 inch while the edge of the label is really at 1/4 inch. This puts the filename in the bottom edge of the label. I've tried changing the margins in Excel but the result is always the same. I can not find any control over the PDF margins. I just need to "zoom" out a bit so

[scbikeck]

It's pretty lame that it's so buried, but you actually can change the margins through the header and footer dialog box.  Go  under "Documents," select "Header and Footer," and in the upper right-hand corner of the dialog box the top, bottom, right, and left margins can be changed there.

Hope that helps.

Absolutely rediculous that since the margins *can* be changed that the option is not right under the File menu, that there's no Page Setup option or something equally straightforward.  I don't generally like Adobe because there are so many things like that about the program, but given that it's the industry standard for viewing scanned documents, we're kinda over a barrel with this.  Really, really lame though.

I searched Adobe's program help, online help, this forum--then my co-worker pointed out that the margin settings were right there in the Header and Footer dialog box!  Great co-worker.  Lame program and help options.

[Ozzwoman9]

This only changes the Header or Footer margins, this does not change the document margins.

[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.

[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]

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