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Crop PDF

Adjust PDF page crop boundaries.

Select a PDF document to crop

Trim margins, cut header/footer clutter, or remove scanner borders (up to 50 MB)

Precise Margin Trimming
Trim margins in points, inches, or millimeters with live visual feedback.
All Pages or Custom Range
Apply one crop configuration across all pages, the active page, or a custom range.
Local File Processing
Crop processing runs in your browser; selected PDFs are not sent for remote processing.

Trim Margins & Adjust PDF Page Boundaries in Your Browser

To add text, a logo or a visual mark instead of changing page boundaries, use the Free PDF Editor. Neither cropping nor placing a cover securely removes underlying content; read covering text versus redaction before sharing sensitive information.

PDF documents produced by physical flatbed scanners, book digitizers, or office desktop printers frequently contain unwanted margins. Wide white borders waste screen space on tablet e-readers, scanner lid shadows create unsightly dark edges, and repeated running headers or footers clutter multi-page reference manuals.

FivoTools Crop PDF provides a precise, visual workspace to trim margins and define clean viewing boundaries. You can apply your chosen crop margins across every page uniformly, to the active page only, or across a specific page range. Cropping runs in your browser without sending the selected PDF to a FivoTools processing server.

How PDF Cropping Works

This tool updates each selected page's CropBox, which changes the visible page area. It keeps the page's MediaBox unchanged and starts from the page's current visible crop area. It does not rewrite the page as an image or remove content outside the new box.

MediaBox

Defines the page's overall media bounds. This tool leaves that box unchanged.

CropBox

Defines the visible portion of the page for display or print. The tool sets this box from the current CropBox and your selected margin values.

Preserving Document Geometry

You can enter margins in points, inches, or millimeters and apply one set of values to all pages, the current page, or a page range. Rotated pages are accounted for in the preview and crop calculation; review each page before relying on the result.

Crop Is Not Redaction

Cropping changes visibility, not data removal

Cropping a PDF does not delete underlying content.

Content outside the new CropBox can remain in the PDF even though it is not visible in an ordinary page view. A reader with PDF editing or inspection software may be able to reveal or extract it.

Do not use this tool to hide confidential information.Use a purpose-built redaction workflow that removes the selected content, then verify the sanitized output before sharing it.

Practical Use Cases for PDF Cropping

  • Reducing visible margins: Crop excess white space around a scan or document for a closer page view.
  • Removing Scanner Shadows & Artifacts: Trim away visual scanner shadows, hole-punch marks, or dark scanner lid borders created when digitizing physical paper sheets.
  • Changing what is shown: Crop repeated headers, footers, scanner borders, or binding margins when they are outside the area you want readers to see. This does not remove those marks from the file.
  • Trimming Uniform Margins: Remove uniform excess white border space or binding margins across multi-page scans or documents.

Browser-Based PDF Processing

The selected PDF is processed in your browser and is not sent to a FivoTools processing server:

  • Your PDF bytes are loaded directly via the browser HTML5 File API.
  • Bounding box calculations and PDF serialization run entirely on your local machine CPU.
  • Normal page and asset requests still reach our host; consented analytics may record allowlisted tool events.
  • To restore your source PDF after a refresh, this browser may save a local IndexedDB copy for up to 7 days. Use Reset to remove this tool-session copy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does cropping reduce the file size of my PDF?

Cropping changes the page's CropBox; it does not remove page content outside that box and is not designed to reduce file size. The exact saved file size can still vary when the PDF is rewritten.

Can I apply different crop margins to different pages?

No. Each crop operation applies one set of margin trims to your chosen scope (all pages, current page only, or a custom page range). To crop different pages with different margins, process the file in separate runs targeting the desired pages or page ranges.

Will cropping affect the searchable text or vector quality?

The tool changes the page box and does not intentionally rasterize the PDF. Check the exported page in your viewer; this is not a guarantee that every source feature will render identically.

Can a cropped PDF be uncropped later?

The output keeps the page content and MediaBox, but the tool does not save the previous CropBox as a separate restore point. Keep the original PDF if you may need its initial framing. Cropping is not redaction.

How can I rotate or rearrange pages after cropping?

If you need to rotate individual pages, reorder sections, or delete unneeded pages after trimming margins, load your cropped document into our Organize PDF tool. All page orientation and page order adjustments execute locally in your browser.

Related PDF Productivity Tools

After cropping, continue with the PDF action that fits your document:

File Limits and References

This tool accepts PDFs up to 50 MB and 100 pages. Password-protected or encrypted PDFs must be unlocked first.