About Resize PDF
This tool changes the paper size of a PDF’s pages. Pick one of six standard formats, Letter, Legal or Tabloid from the North American system, or A3, A4 or A5 from the international ISO 216 series, and each page in the document is set to that size. It is the quick way to convert a PDF to A4 for a printer abroad, or to Letter for an office in the US. If you came here to make a PDF smaller in megabytes, that is a different job, and Compress PDF handles it.
Each page’s content is scaled to fit its new sheet with its proportions kept, so nothing is stretched or squashed, and it is centered. When the old and new shapes differ, the leftover space appears as equal white bands on two opposite sides. Orientation is respected page by page: a portrait page becomes a portrait page of the chosen size, and a landscape page becomes a landscape one.
Scaling works on the page content as vector graphics instead of turning pages into pictures. Text stays sharp at any zoom and can still be selected, searched and copied. Two things are not carried over: clickable links and fillable form fields.
How to use Resize PDF
- Bring in the PDFDrop your file onto the tool or browse to it. A PDF that needs a password to open has to be unlocked with Unlock PDF first, which only works if you know the password.
- Pick the new paper sizeSelect Letter, Legal, Tabloid, A3, A4 or A5. The size applies to every page, in portrait or landscape to match how each page is already oriented.
- Save, then print one test pageDownload the resized copy. If it is headed for a printer, print a single page at actual size or 100% scale first and look at the margins before sending the whole document.
When people use it
Printing an A4 document on US Letter paper
A4 is taller and narrower than Letter, so an A4 file sent to a Letter printer may lose its footer or get shrunk in ways you didn’t choose. Converting it to Letter first gives the printer a page that matches the paper in the tray.
Meeting a portal’s page-size rule
Court e-filing systems, visa portals and some university submission sites often accept only Letter or only A4 pages. Resizing the PDF meets the rule without rebuilding the document from its original source.
Evening out a file with mixed page sizes
A PDF assembled from scanned receipts, downloaded statements and photographed pages can contain pages of every size. Resizing gives them all the same dimensions, so the document scrolls smoothly on screen and prints consistently.
The six sizes compared
| Size | Inches | Millimeters | Where it is common |
|---|---|---|---|
| Letter | 8.5 × 11 | 215.9 × 279.4 | Everyday documents in the US and Canada |
| Legal | 8.5 × 14 | 215.9 × 355.6 | Contracts and some legal and real-estate forms in the US |
| Tabloid | 11 × 17 | 279.4 × 431.8 | Large spreadsheets, drawings and newsletters |
| A3 | 11.69 × 16.54 | 297 × 420 | Technical drawings, posters and wide charts outside North America |
| A4 | 8.27 × 11.69 | 210 × 297 | Standard office paper in most countries |
| A5 | 5.83 × 8.27 | 148 × 210 | Booklets, notebooks and flyers |
Dimensions are listed in portrait; landscape pages simply swap width and height. The A sizes are defined in ISO 216, and each one has half the area of the size above it.
How much content shrinks or grows
Because each page is scaled evenly until it fits, the change depends on how different the two shapes are:
- A4 to Letter: Letter is wider but shorter, so the height limits the scale. Content ends up at about 94% of its size, with a white strip of roughly 9 mm (0.36 in) on the left and right.
- Letter to A4: A4 is narrower, so the width decides. Content shrinks to about 97%, leaving bands of roughly 13 mm (0.5 in) at the top and bottom.
- Letter to Legal: the width is identical, so content stays at full size and the extra length becomes about 38 mm (1.5 in) of space above and below.
- Between A sizes: A3, A4 and A5 share the same proportions, so no bands appear at all. A4 to A5 scales content to about 71%, and A4 to A3 enlarges it to about 141%.
Shrinking a page shrinks its type too. Going from A4 to A5 turns 10-point body text into roughly 7-point text, which works in a booklet but is tight for long reading, so look at a page closely before printing a large run.
Links, form fields and other caveats
- Links and form fields. A resized copy has no clickable links and no fillable boxes. If the file is a filled-in form, use Flatten PDF before resizing; the answers then turn into ordinary page content and scale along with the rest.
- Document properties. If the title and author of the new file matter, look at them in Edit PDF Metadata and fill them in where needed.
- Every page changes. The chosen size applies to the whole document. To resize only part of it, pull those pages out with Extract PDF Pages, resize them, and put the files back together with Merge PDF.
- Trimming rather than scaling. If the problem is wide margins rather than the wrong paper format, Crop PDF trims edges without scaling anything.
- Very large files. Hundreds of pages or heavy scans need plenty of memory, and a computer copes with them better than a phone.
Resizing happens on your own device inside this tab. The PDF never travels to pd00 or anywhere else, and the privacy page lists simple checks that prove it.