When a form says your PDF is too large
An exam portal, a job application or a government scheme refuses your PDF and names a limit, often 100 KB, 200 KB or 1 MB. Most people who search for resizing a PDF are in exactly that spot, and on this page resizing means the number of kilobytes the file takes up. The pages themselves are never made larger or smaller, so if the form complained about page size rather than file size, one of the other tools below is the one you want.
Updated
Which tool you need
A form that states a limit in KB or MB
This page. Pick the limit the form gives, and the size you see before downloading is the measured size of the file you will save, so you can check it against the form first.
A portal that wants every page on A4 or US Letter
PDF to A4 fits each page onto the paper size you choose, centered and never cropped. Resizing here would leave every page the shape it already was.
Wide white borders, or only part of a page wanted
Crop PDF trims the margins from one page or from all of them.
Several pages to print small on one sheet
Multiple Pages per Sheet lays two, four, six, eight or nine pages out on each sheet of paper, which is the other thing people sometimes mean by resizing.
A long scan that stays above the limit
Send fewer pages. Delete PDF Pages takes out the ones the form never asked for, which often saves more than any quality setting can.
Which limit to choose
Choose the exact figure the form prints, not the next one up. The menu runs from under 20 KB to under 10 MB, and kilobytes are counted here in thousands of bytes, the stricter of the two ways forms count them, so a file that passes here passes either reading.
If the PDF is already small enough it comes back unchanged, so trying it costs nothing. Before anything runs the page also says whether the file should fit, may only just fit, or cannot get there, which tells you early whether to start taking pages out.
What becomes smaller, and what cannot
Only the pictures inside the file are re-saved: scanned pages and photos, at a lower quality one step at a time, stopping as soon as the file is under your limit. Typed text and ordinary links within the file or to websites are left as they were, so the words stay crisp even when the pictures soften.
That is also why some files will not move much. A typed letter with no pictures has nothing to give up, and pictures a scanner app saved without loss are not touched, so a file like that may stay above a small limit whatever you pick.
What to know before you start
- Page dimensions never change here: no scaling, cropping or new margins.
- The smallest limit offered is under 20 KB; there is nothing below it.
- A PDF with a password has to go through Unlock PDF first.
- Nothing is uploaded. The smaller copy is written by your browser on this device.