Can I rotate only some pages?

Yes. In the rotate PDF tool, press the rotate button on the pages you want in the page previews, or rotate every page at once.

Does rotating reduce quality?

No. Our tool only changes the page’s rotation value, which the PDF specification sets in steps of 90 degrees; the page content isn’t redrawn.

Is the cropped-off part really gone?

No. Cropping hides what’s outside the box, but the data stays in the file; Adobe says cropping only hides content. To remove confidential information, use the redaction tool.

Does cropping make the file smaller?

No. Adobe says cropping a PDF doesn’t reduce file size, because the original content is still there. To shrink the file, use compress PDF.

Rotate sideways PDF pages and crop PDF margins (does cropping delete anything?)

Some scanned pages came out sideways or upside down, or a PDF has huge white margins. Here is how to rotate pages permanently, how to crop them, and something many people don’t realise: cropping doesn’t delete anything.

In short

Sideways or upside-down pages: use rotate PDF, one page or all of them.
Wide margins, or you only want part of a page: use crop PDF.
Hiding confidential information: don’t crop; use redact PDF.

Every tool runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded.

Rotating pages

The PDF 1.7 specification (ISO 32000-1) gives each page a Rotate value: how many degrees clockwise it is turned when displayed or printed, always a multiple of 90. Our tool changes that value, so the page content isn’t redrawn and stays just as sharp.

Open rotate PDF and choose a file.
In the previews, rotate just the wrong pages, or all pages, by 90 or 180 degrees.
Download the new file. The original isn’t changed.

Viewing rotated vs saving rotated: Adobe explains that View › Rotate view in Acrobat only changes the view; the original orientation comes back next time the PDF opens. If you’re sending the file on, rotate and save a new file.

To rotate, reorder and delete pages in one place, use organize PDF.

Cropping pages

Open crop PDF and choose a file.
Drag a box around what you want, or trim white margins automatically.
Apply it to every page or just one.
Download the new file.

Is the cropped part really gone?

No. The PDF specification describes the crop box as the region to which a page’s contents are clipped when displayed or printed; it has no meaning in terms of the physical page.

Adobe says cropping a PDF only hides content, doesn’t reduce file size, and resetting the page size restores the full original content.
Adobe also lists “deleted or cropped content” as a kind of hidden data that has to be removed separately.
Apple describes cropping in Preview on Mac as a way to hide content, and it can be undone.

To really remove confidential information: the UK National Archives requires redaction to remove information from the file irreversibly, not just from what’s displayed, and to be done on a copy, not the original. The US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Rhode Island warns that turning text white or covering it with drawing tools can be undone by anyone to reveal the text underneath.

Our redact PDF tool turns pages with redactions into pictures, so the text under the black bars isn’t in the new file.

Note

This article is based on Adobe’s edition of the PDF 32000-1:2008 specification (copy in the Internet Archive), Adobe and Apple help pages, the UK National Archives’ redaction toolkit and a notice from the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Rhode Island, read on 30 September 2026.