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How can I control my printer settings?

Here's how you can scale or resize PDF pages in Acrobat or Reader and other tips on adjusting your print settings.

Melissa Teague avatar
Written by Melissa Teague
Updated over 2 months ago

Acrobat can size the pages of a PDF to fit the selected paper size.

  1. Choose File > Print.

  2. From the Page Scaling pop-up menu, select one of the following options:
    Fit To Printable Area Scales small pages up and large pages down to fit the paper.
    Shrink To Printable Area Resizes only large pages to fit the paper and prints small pages as they are.

    Select options from Page Scaling pop-up menu
  3. Click OK or Print.

Tip: (Acrobat only, not Adobe Reader) You can set up a PDF to default to specific scaling or print options. Choose File > Properties, and click the Advanced tab. Select options for the Print Dialog Presets. The Default option in the Page Scaling pop-up menu is Shrink To Printable Area. Save the file to apply the new defaults. For more information, see Print Dialog Presets in Acrobat Help.

Manually scale using percentages

Not available in Adobe Reader 9: Scale using the preset scale options in Adobe Reader 9 or earlier.

You can magnify or reduce a PDF by an exact percentage.

  1. Choose File > Print.

  2. From the Page Scaling pop-up menu, select Tile All Pages to expose the Tile Scale % option.
    Note: If the tile options are not in the menu, make sure that the following options are not selected in the Advanced Print dialog box: Print as Image or, for Acrobat only, Separations or In-RIP Separations.

  3. For Tile Scale, type the percentage you want to magnify or reduce the PDF. Click any other option to refresh the preview on the right.

    Tile Scale options

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