To crop a PDF, open it in OpenPdfEdit, open the Pages panel, choose Crop by dragging…, and drag a rectangle over the part of the page you want to keep. You can crop one page or every page in one go. It runs in your browser tab, and the file is not uploaded.
One thing to know before you start: cropping hides the rest of the page. It does not delete it. If the part you are cropping off is private, read the section on hidden content before you send the file to anyone.
Crop a page by dragging
- Open openpdfedit.com/app and choose Open PDF….
- In the toolbar, choose Pages. A panel opens on the right with a thumbnail of every page.
- Choose Crop by dragging…. A bar appears above the document: "Drag a rectangle over the part of the page to keep."
- Leave This page selected.
- Drag a rectangle over the part you want to keep. While you drag, the rest of the page is dimmed. When you let go, the page is cropped straight away. There is no confirmation step.
- Choose Save a copy. The copy is offered under the same file name as the original, so change the name if you want to keep both.
This is how you trim white margins from a scan, or keep one chart out of a full page.
If the page is taller than the window, use the zoom-out button in the top bar until the whole page fits, then drag.
Crop mode ends after one drag. To crop another page, choose Crop by dragging… again and drag on that page. With This page selected, the page you drag on is the one that is cropped. Done leaves crop mode without changing anything.
Dragging works the same way on landscape pages and on pages that have been rotated. The area you drag is the area you keep.
Crop every page at once
In the bar, choose All pages before you drag. The rectangle you draw on one page is applied to every page in the document.
This suits a document where every page is the same size, such as a scan with the same margin on each page. The rectangle is measured from the bottom-left corner of each page. If the pages are different sizes, it lands on a different part of each one, so check the result page by page. If the rectangle misses one of the pages completely, nothing is cropped, and the app says "the crop rectangle does not overlap the visible page".
There is no setting for a range of pages. To crop only some of the pages, crop them one at a time.
Crop by typing numbers
Dragging is quick, but hard to repeat exactly. For an exact crop, type the numbers.
- In the Pages panel, find the page and choose the small crop icon next to its thumbnail. Its tooltip reads "Crop by numbers".
- A box titled Set crop box asks for four numbers, "left,bottom,right,top", in PDF points. It also shows the size of the page.
- Type the numbers with commas between them and choose Crop.
A point is 1/72 of an inch, and the numbers are measured from the bottom-left corner of the page. A US Letter page is 612 by 792 points, so 36,36,576,756 trims half an inch from every side.
This works on one page at a time. To give several pages exactly the same crop, type the same four numbers for each of them.
Use dragging, not numbers, on a page that has been rotated or has already been cropped. On those pages the numbers are counted on the original page, full size and unrotated, which is not what you see on screen.
Undo a crop
While the document is open, the Undo button in the top bar reverses a crop. So does Ctrl+Z on Windows. One Undo reverses an All pages crop on every page.
Cropping hides content. It does not delete it
A PDF page records how big the page is. Cropping adds a second, smaller box, the crop box, that tells a reader which part to show. Everything that was on the page is still in the file.
In a PDF reader, the cropped copy looks the way you expect. The page opens at the new, smaller size and shows only what you kept. But:
- The text is still there. Open the cropped copy in OpenPdfEdit, choose Find, and search for a word from the part you cropped off. It is found. Export the document with Text, and those words are in the export.
- The whole page can be brought back. Open the cropped copy, choose the crop icon for the page, and type the size of the full page, for example
0,0,612,792for US Letter. The page returns at full size, with the text and images that were cropped off. - The file does not get smaller. Nothing was removed.
So crop for framing: white margins, the space around a slide, one figure out of a page. Do not crop to get rid of a name, an address or an account number. Anyone who receives the file can bring it back.
To remove something for good, redact first, then crop
Redaction is the tool that takes content out of the file.
- Switch to Edit and choose Redact.
- Drag over the text or image that has to go.
- The app asks "Redact this area?" and explains: "The underlying text and images in this area are permanently removed, not just covered over." Choose Redact.
- Then crop the page as described above, and save a copy.
Do it in this order. Once a page is cropped, the part you wanted to remove is no longer on screen to drag over. There is more detail in how to redact a PDF.
Your file stays on your computer
OpenPdfEdit does the work inside the browser tab. The PDF is read from your disk and the cropped copy is written back to it. Nothing is uploaded, and you do not need an account.
It also works without a connection. Open the app once while you are online and give it a few seconds to finish loading. After that you can reload the page with the network off and crop as usual.
FAQ
Does cropping a PDF delete the part I cropped off?
No. Cropping changes which part of the page is shown. The text and images outside the crop stay in the file and can be brought back. To remove them, redact them before you crop.
Can I crop all pages of a PDF at once?
Yes. Choose Crop by dragging…, select All pages, and drag once. The same rectangle is applied to every page.
Can I crop each page differently?
Yes. Keep This page selected and crop the pages one at a time. Each page keeps its own crop.
Can I undo a crop after I have saved the file?
Undo only works while the document is open. But the full page is still in the saved copy. Open it, choose the crop icon for the page, and type the full page size.
Does cropping make the PDF file smaller?
No. The content you cropped off is still in the file.
Are my files uploaded when I crop them?
No. The file is read and cropped inside the browser tab, and the copy is saved straight to your computer.
Does cropping cost anything or need an account?
No. Cropping is free and works without signing in.