How to Clean Up a Scanned PDF (Crop, Rotate, Delete & Compress)

Common problems with scanned PDFs

After scanning documents, you might see:

• Thick black borders or extra empty margins around the content.
• Pages scanned sideways or completely upside down.
• Duplicate pages, blank pages, or junk pages from the scanner.
• Very large file size that won’t upload to portals or email.

You can fix all of these issues **directly in your browser** without installing any heavy software.

Step 1 — Crop away black borders and margins

Start by removing the extra border around each page:

1. Open the Crop PDF tool.
2. Upload your scanned PDF.
3. Draw the crop box around just the useful content (ignore the black/white border).
4. Apply the same crop to all pages if they share the same margins.
5. Download the cropped PDF.

This makes the document look cleaner and more professional, and can slightly reduce size as well.

Step 2 — Rotate sideways or upside-down pages

If some scanned pages are sideways:

1. Open the Rotate PDF tool.
2. Upload the cropped PDF from Step 1.
3. Select the pages that are sideways or upside down.
4. Use Rotate Left or Rotate Right until they look correct.
5. Download the fixed PDF.

Step 3 — Delete blank or junk pages

Scanners often add extra blank pages, test pages, or covers you don’t need:

1. Open the Delete pages tool.
2. Upload the PDF from Step 2.
3. Select unnecessary pages: blank pages, cover sheet, test scans, etc.
4. Delete them and download the cleaned-up PDF.

Step 4 — Compress the scanned PDF to reduce size

Scanned PDFs are usually image-based and can be very large. Compress them before uploading:

1. Open the Compress PDF tool.
2. Upload the cleaned PDF from Step 3.
3. Choose a preset such as Balanced or Strong.
4. Compress and download the new file.
5. Check that the text is still readable. If needed, try a slightly higher quality preset.

This usually brings scanned PDFs under common limits like 1–5 MB for portals and email.

Bonus — Save important pages as images

Sometimes a portal only accepts JPG or PNG files. You can export specific pages from your scanned PDF as images:

1. Open PDF → Images.
2. Upload your cleaned PDF.
3. Export pages as PNG or JPG.
4. Upload those images wherever required.

Works on Windows, Mac, Android & iPhone

• Windows & Mac — use Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari.
• Android — open the tools in Chrome.
• iPhone — open the tools in Safari or Chrome.

All tools run inside your browser. Processing is done locally, so your scanned documents stay on your device.