Is it possible to reduce page size?

[Phoenix89MR]

My HP scanner (whether I like it or not . . . and I don't) produces 8.5 x 15 pdfs.  (The bottom 4 inches are all white.)  I would like to convert these in Acrobat 9.0 to 8.5 x 11 by cropping off the bottom 4 inches.  The dumb size scans HP puts out are not only bigger files than they need to be, but they are also unprofessional looking.

Can Acrobat do this?  From reviewing similar posts, I'm beginning to doubt it.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Does your scanner have scanning software of its own?

If not look up on Google Silverfast and go to their website.  For 49 dollars you can can get a Customized (specfically) for scanner Scanner Twain Driver and Front end It allow you to set height and width and then move the frop box to exact position you need to do the actual scan. It saves in tif(tiff), jpg(jpeg), or PDF Format.

To my knowledge there is no real way to control height and width of the scan within acrobat.

Yo can do a crop removing the unwanted margins the do a Save As... PDF. that will do what is called re-frying the PDF. Its not usually recommend as quaility can suffer.

[Phoenix89MR]

Phil:

Thanks for the prompt response.  I am constantly amazed that seemingly simple things are not possible . . . or cost 50 bucks to fix.

I do have the option with the lousy HP software provided with the scanner to manually crop each page back to 8.5 x 11.  That's fine with 2 or 3 pages, not so fine with 20.

Oh well . . .  Welcome to the "Where Can I Not Go Today" world dominated by PCs . . . .

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Have you check page setup  for printing also affects size of the scan.

set to 8.5 x11 Letter and save as the standard.

Also typically most Scan Software whether fro Manufacturer or third party usually has a Grab Box that can be adjusted from top , bottom left or right. . Uou mouse over the edges and a crooshair aroorows point both directions, or a grab hand appears click and hold mout and Drag.  on yours sound like you need to grab the bottom of the rectangle and move up. You can adjust so that you just scan what part you want. Then move by clicking somewhere within rectangle and moving around. One you have this set, as long as you load the pages on to scanner in exact same position you can scan as much as you want for that time period.

(Please note information is given by an Experienced User of Acrobat. I am not an employee of Adobe.)

[Phoenix89MR]

Phil:

If only you were on the HP product development team, me and the thousands of others who have complained about this problem would have a solution.  Unfortunately, the poor stepchild software HP developed for the Mac contains no opportunity to define the page size.  (This is with the document feeder; I can set page size on a singe sheet scan.)

With a multiple page scan, you put the sheets to be scanned into the feeder, and there is no chance to define anything until you have output.  Then you can make changes one page at a time, either by dragging crop handles or by typing in the page size on each page.

They do have an "autocrop" feature, but it produces the opposite ugly result: You wind up with pages that are odd sizes.  Yes I know that in both cases they print OK, but I don't like sending out work to a client that looks like an 8 year old did it.

Sounds to me like I'm stuck with poor choices.  Thanks for trying.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Looks like silverfast will be the best alternative. Its does have ability adjust sizes. Sorry.

If you go to OSX.6 there are supposed to be updated features. however. that open other  issues as the PDFwriter (adobe PDF in the printer list) no longer works. You have to do so through apple's print command and choose Acrobat Quality PDF. Many people can't get it to work.

[Phoenix89MR]

Yeah, on Snow Leopard I have some waiting to do, at the very least until they make it compatible with CS4

[MichaelKazlow]

Acrobat can crop all of the pages at once. It uses a non-destructive crop. The information is still in the file, but ANY program that handles pdfs will only show and work with the cropped image unless you tell them differently.

[Phoenix89MR]

That was my original question.  How do you do that?

[Phillip_M_Jones]

1. Open scanned pdf
2. Go to Edit menu
3. Choose Crop PDF

I have shown above adjusting bottom margin notice line showing in the sample

You can adjust Right , left, and top.

once you have these settings then you crop each succeeding PDF wiith same settings.

Michael can tell you how to apply to multiple PDf's at the same time.

(Please note information is given by an Experienced User of Acrobat. I am not an employee of Adobe.)

[waikatotaplin]

In previous versions of Acrobat (8) I used to be able to reduce A4 pages to A5 format. However in Acrobat 10 this is no longer possible with the crop pages function. I get the message "Page size may not be reduced". Are you able to troubleshoot this at all?

[jonbessant]

Acrobat can crop the page content but not REDUCE the page (media box) size - this did not work in Acrobat 8 either.

It can however ENLARGE the page (media box) size.

You can always PRINT the PDF to a scale option but just be careful since making a PDF of a PDF is actually quite dangerous.

Jon

[waikatotaplin]

Thanks for the reply,

Printing to pdf (or in mycase postscript) was how I used to reduce the page size, but you can no longer choose to print to pdf in acrobat 10 now... unless I'm mistaken?

Its a function I miss hugely, it makes what used to be a 5 minute job, now take forever.. if only clients would reformat their word documents before sending to me...

Thanks

Bron

[Tab_Tree_Junkie]

(This isn't quite the answer to this post, but it is an answer to similar questions related to scanned documents that are larger than 8.5 x 11, so enjoy...)

I  joined this site just to answer your question. I typically use this site  to troubleshoot, but had a real hard time figuring this one out. Like  four hours hard. But then one of the Adobe forums taught me the way.

Unfortunately  Abode Acrobat cannot reduce the page size. You can try to go 'File'  > 'Print' > 'Scale to fit' > 'Save as pdf', but then you learn  that Adobe Acrobat won't let you save your document this way.You can try  to go 'Advanced' > 'Print product' > 'Crop Page', but then you  find that Adobe 'Can't reduce page size' (or some like message).

This is why you need to download a free pdf program called 'Skim'. It is easily found online, and can be installed within minutes. Once  you've installed this program, it is as easy as 'File' > 'Print' >  'Scale to page' > 'PDF' > 'Save as pdf'. (Within 15 minutes I had  downloaded and resized 37 pages, less time then it took me to join this  forum and post this answer!)

And now your giant page is  saved as a 8.5 x 11. At this point you can close it down, and reopen it  in Acrobat, or Adobe Reader if that is your software. I am somewhat  dumbfounded that Acrobat does not support page reduction, especially  after reviewing dozens of unanswered threads.

I hope that helps the rest of you, as it helped me.

Thanks...

[Dawgman14]

I just spent an hour talking to tech support about how to solve this problem.  they couldn't figure it out.  told me it is probably a setting on my hp scanner.  problem was, my scanner can only scan 8.5 x 11, not 8.5 x 15.  So, after some fiddling around, I figured it out.

File > Create PDF from scanner > Custom Scan > Choose the correct scanner and click Options > Data Transfer Method can be either Memory or Native (doesn't matter) > User Interface > choose "Show Scanners Native Interface" > Click Ok > Click Scan > Box should pop up giving you the option of document feeder or flatbed and type of picture > choose whatever works for you > Bottom of the page "CHOOSE PAGE SIZE" > Default is 8.5 x 14 inches > change to Letter 8.5 x 11 > Click Scan.

Unfortunately, it doesn't save it, so you have to do it each time.

Hope this helps.

[Grady G]

On the Mac, you can open them in Preview and then print to PDF, set the page size and then pull down the Save as PDF menu and you're set.