How to resize PDF pages to A4 or Letter

To resize a PDF to A4, open it in a page resize tool, choose A4 (or Letter, if you are in North America), apply it to every page and save a new copy. The content is fitted onto the new page size, so a mixed bundle of scans and downloads becomes one even document. Resizing changes the page, not the file size in megabytes.

A4, Letter and Legal: what is the difference?

These are the three paper sizes people meet most often.

• A4 is 210 by 297 millimetres. It is the standard in most of the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa and much of South America.
• Letter is 8.5 by 11 inches. It is the standard in the United States and Canada.
• Legal is 8.5 by 14 inches, longer than Letter. It is used for some contracts and forms in North America.

A4 is slightly narrower and taller than Letter. That small difference is why a Letter document printed on A4 paper can end up with odd margins, or why an A4 file printed in the US may clip the bottom line.

When you need to resize PDF pages to A4

• An upload portal insists on A4. Many government, university and job portals ask for A4 pages.
• Your file mixes sizes. Phone scans, photos turned into PDFs and downloaded forms rarely match. Resizing gives every page the same size.
• You are printing on a different paper standard. A Letter document headed for an A4 printer, or the other way round.
• Photos became giant pages. When you turn a phone photo into a PDF, the page can match the photo's shape and size rather than a sheet of paper.

How to resize a PDF to A4, step by step

1. Open the PDF in a page resize tool.
2. Choose the target size: A4, Letter or Legal.
3. Apply it to all pages so the document is consistent.
4. Check portrait and landscape pages. A wide table should stay landscape, not get squeezed onto a portrait page.
5. Save as a new file.
6. Open the result and zoom in on small text to make sure it is still readable.

What happens to the content when pages are resized?

The content is fitted to the new page. A page that was bigger than A4 is scaled down to fit. A page that was smaller is usually centred, and the extra space becomes margin. Because A4 and Letter have slightly different shapes, a page will not fill the new size perfectly, so expect a thin band of white space on two sides.

If a page has very large margins to begin with, crop it first, then resize. That way the content fills more of the new page. Our guide to cropping PDF pages and trimming margins covers that step.

Will resizing make the text blurry?

Not for real text. Text in a PDF is usually stored as shapes, not pixels, so it stays sharp at any size. Scanned pages and photos are pixels, so shrinking them is fine, but enlarging a small, low-resolution scan to fill an A4 page can make it look soft. The cure is a better scan, not a different resize setting. See our phone scanning tips.

Resizing is not the same as compressing

People often say "resize" when they mean "make smaller". Resizing pages changes the paper size. Compressing changes how many kilobytes the file takes up. If a portal rejects your file because it is too large, you need compression. Read how to get a PDF under 1 MB, 500 KB or 200 KB.

Resize, then add page furniture

If you plan to add page numbers, a header or a footer, do it after resizing. Stamps added first can end up in the wrong place once the page changes shape. Our guide to adding headers and footers to a PDF has tips on keeping them clear of the content.

Printing without resizing the file

If you only need a paper copy, you may not have to resize the file at all. Most print dialogues have a "fit to page" or "scale to fit" option that does the job at print time. Resizing the file is better when you need to send or upload it, because the recipient gets the right size without changing any settings.

Resizing pages in PDF Burrow

PDF Burrow has a Resize Pages tool that fits every page to a standard size such as A4, Letter or Legal. The work happens on your phone, so the file is not uploaded. When you build a PDF from photos with the Image to PDF tool, you can set the page size there from the start.

Frequently asked questions

Is A4 bigger than Letter?

A4 is taller but slightly narrower than Letter. Neither is simply bigger, which is why documents moved between the two need a little extra margin somewhere.

Can I resize only one page of a PDF?

Some tools apply the size to the whole document only. If you need one odd page, split it out, resize it, then merge it back in at the right position.

Why did my file size not change after resizing?

Resizing changes the page dimensions, not the image quality or the amount of data inside. To reduce kilobytes, use a compression tool instead.

What size is a standard PDF?

There is no single default. A PDF page can be any size, but documents made for printing are usually A4 outside North America and Letter inside it.