# Crop PDF page margins

Make PDF pages smaller by cutting off white margins, and remove headers, footers or other content printed in the margins, from the command line. **Toggle Page Boxes** in SumatraPDF shows the boxes that set a page's size.

**Available in [pre-release 3.7](https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/prerelease)**

**Crop every page by 36 points (half an inch) on each side: `sumatrapdf-tool run crop.js in.pdf out.pdf 36 36 36 36`.** At a glance:

- **See the page boxes:** `Ctrl + K`, `Toggle Page Boxes` (`CmdTogglePageBoxes`) in SumatraPDF, or `sumatrapdf-tool pages in.pdf`.
- **Crop the page (hide the margins):** the `crop.js` script below, run with `sumatrapdf-tool run`.
- **Remove content in the margins:** `sumatrapdf-tool trim -b mediabox -m 40 -o out.pdf in.pdf`

`sumatrapdf-tool` is installed with SumatraPDF and added to PATH. [SumatraPDF.exe <tool>](Tools.md) takes the same arguments.

## How page boxes work

- **MediaBox** is the whole sheet.
- **CropBox** is the part of the sheet that viewers, SumatraPDF included, show and print. Without a CropBox the whole MediaBox is shown.
- **BleedBox**, **TrimBox** and **ArtBox** are for print production; many PDFs don't have them.

Cropping sets the CropBox: the margins are hidden, but what's in them stays in the file. `trim` does the opposite: it deletes content outside a box but keeps the page size.

## See the page boxes

In SumatraPDF, open the PDF and press `Ctrl + K`, then `Toggle Page Boxes` in [Command Palette](Command-Palette.md). Each box the page has is outlined and labeled with its name. Run it again to hide them. In pre-release builds it is also **Debug → Show page boxes**. The command is only offered for PDF files.

From the command line:

```
sumatrapdf-tool pages in.pdf 1
```

```xml
<page pagenum="1">
<MediaBox l="0" b="0" r="595" t="842" />
<CropBox l="36" b="36" r="559" t="806" />
<Rotate v="0" />
</page>
```

Values are in points (1/72 inch), measured from the bottom-left corner. Leave out the page number to list every page. `pages` lists only the boxes set on the page itself; a MediaBox set once for the whole document isn't shown. See [sumatrapdf-tool pages](Tool-pages.md).

## Crop the margins

Save this as `crop.js`:

```js
// sumatrapdf-tool run crop.js in.pdf out.pdf top right bottom left
var doc = Document.openDocument(scriptArgs[0]);
var top = Number(scriptArgs[2]), right = Number(scriptArgs[3]);
var bottom = Number(scriptArgs[4]), left = Number(scriptArgs[5]);
for (var i = 0; i < doc.countPages(); i++) {
	var page = doc.loadPage(i);
	var r = page.getBounds("MediaBox"); // [x0, y0, x1, y1], y0 is the top
	page.setPageBox("CropBox", [r[0] + left, r[1] + top, r[2] - right, r[3] - bottom]);
}
doc.save(scriptArgs[1]);
```

Then run it with the margins to cut, in points, in the order top, right, bottom, left:

```
sumatrapdf-tool run crop.js in.pdf out.pdf 36 36 36 36
```

- 72 points = 1 inch, 28.35 points = 1 cm.
- Every page is cropped by the same amounts.
- Top and left mean as the page is shown, also on rotated pages.
- Margins are measured from the sheet (MediaBox), so cropping an already cropped file replaces the old crop instead of adding to it. To undo a crop, run it with `0 0 0 0`.

Open `out.pdf` in SumatraPDF, or check the new CropBox with `sumatrapdf-tool pages out.pdf 1`. More on scripts: [sumatrapdf-tool run](Tool-run.md).

## Remove content in the margins

`trim` deletes text, images and drawings that lie completely outside a box. To remove everything within 40 points of the page edges, e.g. running headers, footers and page numbers:

```
sumatrapdf-tool trim -b mediabox -m 40 -o out.pdf in.pdf
```

- `-b` is the box to start from: `mediabox`, `cropbox`, `bleedbox`, `trimbox` or `artbox`.
- `-m` moves the box inward (negative values move it outward): one value for all sides, `20,30` for top and bottom, left and right, or `10,20,30,40` for top, right, bottom, left.
- `-e` does the reverse: removes the content inside the box and keeps the margins.
- `-o` is required; without it `trim` stops with `argument error: no output to write to`.
- Anything that is partly inside the box is kept whole.
- The page size doesn't change. To also make the page smaller, run `crop.js` on the result.

Note: pass `-b`. Without it `trim` uses the CropBox, and on a page without one it prints `No box found for page 0` and changes nothing. `-f` falls back to the MediaBox, but then ignores `-m`.

If `trim -b mediabox` also prints `No box found for page ...`, the pages share one MediaBox set for the whole document (`sumatrapdf-tool pages` then lists no MediaBox). Give every page its own CropBox first, then trim to it:

```
sumatrapdf-tool run crop.js in.pdf tmp.pdf 0 0 0 0
sumatrapdf-tool trim -b cropbox -m 40 -o out.pdf tmp.pdf
```

More in [sumatrapdf-tool trim](Tool-trim.md).

## Tips

- Use `Toggle Page Boxes` or `pages` first to see how big the margins are.
- Use `trim` when the content must really be gone; cropping only hides it. To remove sensitive content, see [Redact a PDF](Redact-a-PDF.md).
- Write to a new file and compare it with the original in SumatraPDF before replacing it.

## See also

- [Print a large page as a poster](Print-PDF-as-poster.md) — split a page into tiles
- [Printing](Printing.md) — print a rectangular part of a page with **Print Selection**
- [sumatrapdf-tool trim](Tool-trim.md), [pages](Tool-pages.md), [run](Tool-run.md)
- [All cmd-line tools](Tools.md)