How to Resize a PDF Page to Letter, A4, or Legal Size
A PDF in A4 prints with weird margins on US Letter paper. A PDF in Legal cuts off on Letter. PDFShed resizes pages to whatever paper size you need before printing.
The problem
You received a PDF in A4 (European size). Your US printer is loaded with Letter paper. Printing causes either margin cutoff or excessive whitespace. Resizing first fixes it.
Step-by-step
- 1
Open the Resize PDF tool
Drop your PDF in.
- 2
Pick target size
Letter (8.5×11"), A4 (8.27×11.69"), Legal (8.5×14"), Tabloid, A3, etc. Custom sizes also supported.
- 3
Choose scaling mode
"Fit": scales content to fit new size, preserving aspect ratio (small whitespace possible). "Fill": fills the new page, may crop content. "Stretch": forces content to fill exactly (distorts).
- 4
Preview a sample page
Make sure no critical content is cropped. If using "Fill", verify margins.
- 5
Convert and download
New PDF has all pages in the target size.
Pro tips
- •For A4 → Letter conversion, "Fit" with auto-scaling preserves all content with slight white space. Most professional.
- •For tight Legal docs that need to fit Letter, "Fill" with crop-tolerance is acceptable.
- •Form-fillable PDFs can break with resizing — fields may shift. Test before sharing.
- •After resizing, run [Compress PDF](/en/tools/compress-pdf) — resized PDFs are sometimes larger than originals.
Frequently asked questions
Will text quality degrade?
No — PDFs are vector-based. Resizing scales vector text without quality loss. Only embedded raster images may lose sharpness if scaled up significantly.
Why does my A4 PDF print with weird margins on Letter?
A4 is taller and narrower than Letter (8.27×11.69 vs 8.5×11). Default printer settings either crop or add whitespace. Resizing first eliminates the mismatch.
Can I resize to a custom size?
Yes — enter exact dimensions in inches or millimeters. Useful for printing booklets, posters, or non-standard formats.
Will form fields work after resizing?
Form fields scale with the page. They remain functional but may need realignment if the resize ratio is significant.