How to crop a PDF
- 1 Open the tool at pdfdistrict.com/crop/ and select your PDF.
- 2 Drag a rectangle over the page preview to mark the area you want to keep.
- 3 Click “Apply Crop.” The cropped PDF downloads immediately, with every page trimmed to that same area.
A real crop, not a white box on top
It's worth being precise about what cropping means here: PDFDistrict changes the page's actual visible area (technically, its CropBox), not just draws something over the parts you don't want. That distinction matters because a genuine crop is respected by every PDF viewer and printer, while a shape drawn on top can still be removed or seen underneath by anyone who edits the file.
Selecting the area visually
Instead of typing in coordinates, you drag a rectangle directly over a preview of the first page to mark what should stay. That same area is then applied to every other page in the document, scaled proportionally — so a document with a mix of page sizes still gets a sensible, consistent crop throughout, and pages that are rotated or in landscape orientation are cropped according to how they actually display, not their raw stored dimensions.
Common reasons to crop a PDF
- Removing scan margins — trimming the blank border a scanner adds around a page
- Isolating one part of a page — keeping just a chart, table or paragraph from a larger layout
- Preparing pages for printing — fitting content to a specific paper size or region
- Removing headers or footers — trimming off a strip that repeats on every page
Cropping a document that's already rotated the wrong way? Fix the orientation first, then crop — that way the selection you drag matches what the page will actually look like in the end.
Frequently asked questions
How do you crop a PDF file?
Open the Crop tool, select your PDF, drag a rectangle over the page preview to mark the area you want to keep and click “Apply Crop.” Every page is trimmed to that same area and the cropped PDF downloads.
Does cropping delete the content outside the area?
No. Cropping changes the visible area of each page (its CropBox) but does not rewrite the page content, so the hidden part is still inside the file. If you need to remove sensitive content, delete the page instead.
Is the PDF uploaded when I crop it?
No. The crop happens in your browser and your original file is not modified.
Prefer Spanish? Read Cómo recortar un PDF. Need to divide the file rather than trim it? See how to split a PDF.