How to crop the margins of a PDF (or focus on just one part)

How to crop a PDF

Cropping a PDF in AtlasDocs means setting a frame: you move a rectangle over the page preview, drag the corners until it covers only the part that matters, and download a cropped copy. The same crop can apply to every page (the default) or only to the page you picked. White margins and scan leftovers stop showing on screen and in print; the text left inside stays crisp and selectable.

1. Open the Crop PDF tool and upload the file (one PDF at a time).
2. If the document has more than one page, use the "Page 1", "Page 2"… selector to choose which one shows in the preview. Drag the white rectangle to move it and the four corners to resize it; the dark area around it is what will be removed.
3. Leave "Apply to all pages" checked (it is by default) to use the same crop on the whole document, or uncheck it to crop only the page shown in the preview.
4. Click "Crop and download". The file is saved with the suffix -recortado in its name.

The rectangle starts with an 8% margin on each side and can be shrunk down to 5% of the page. If the crop comes out too tight, just reopen the original and redo it with more room: the starting file stays on your device, and you can try as many times as you like.

Crop every page or just one: how to decide

Leave "Apply to all pages" checked when the whole document shares the same layout, such as a scan with identical margins on every sheet: one rectangle handles it all. Uncheck it when only one page needs cropping, such as the table on page 7 you want to highlight: pick "Page 7" in the selector, adjust the rectangle and download; the other pages come out exactly as they were. The rectangle is always the same for the whole pass, so different crops on different pages call for separate passes.

What cropping a PDF means (and what it doesn't)

Cropping doesn't erase the content: you simply set a new visible area for the page, like a frame. What sits inside stays; what spills outside stops being shown and printed. That's the PDF format's standard mechanism, which is why another program can widen the frame back and reveal what was outside. This has two consequences: the crop is reversible, which is great for fixing mistakes, and it is no good for hiding information. To truly erase something, see how to redact sensitive data in a PDF.

Don't use cropping to hide sensitive data: the cropped content is still inside the file and can be shown again. To truly erase an ID number, a signature or a passage, use the Redact sensitive data tool, which turns the page into an image and removes whatever sits under the bar.

When it's worth trimming the page

• Removing the wide white margins left by scans that make the page look too small on a phone screen.
• Cutting the dark or crooked leftovers of a document scanned in a hurry.
• Focusing on a single part, such as a table, a chart or a stamp, without the rest of the page around it.
• Adjusting the usable area before printing, so the content isn't squeezed or clipped by the printer.
• Removing the same margin from every page at once, when they share the same layout.

Tips and limits

• Leave a little room around the text: snapping the crop to the edge of the letters tends to clip accents and the parts that hang below, like g and p.
• The crop is proportional: the same rectangle, as a percentage, is applied to each page. Pages of different sizes remain different sizes after the crop.
• A rotated page (with the rotation saved in the file, like a scan lying sideways or a page that went through the rotate tool): the rectangle is applied to the sheet's original position, not the one shown in the preview, and the crop can land in the wrong place. Check the result on those pages before using the file.
• One crop per pass: for different crops on different pages, uncheck "Apply to all pages", crop one, download, and upload the downloaded file to crop the next.
• The file size barely changes, because nothing is deleted. If the goal is to cut the size in MB, the answer is compressing, not cropping.
• Download and check before sending: a crop that's too small is easier to redo than one that's too large.

To make the file lighter, the route is different: see how to compress a PDF without losing quality.

All of the cropping happens inside your browser: the PDF is handled on your own device and is never uploaded to any server.