The international paper size
A4, 210 × 297 mm, is the standard sheet in the United Kingdom, India, Europe, Australia and most countries outside North America. Many submission portals, universities, embassies and publishers in those countries expect A4 pages, and office printers there are loaded with A4 paper.
Documents created in the United States or Canada usually come in Letter, and legal papers sometimes in Legal. Printed on A4 without adjustment, a Letter page can be cut at the sides or leave odd margins, and a Legal page loses its bottom part. Converting the PDF to A4 first avoids those surprises.
From Letter, Legal or anything else
The content of each page is scaled as a whole, keeping its proportions, and centered on the A4 sheet. Nothing is stretched or cropped. Letter is a little wider and shorter than A4 in proportion, so a Letter page becomes slightly smaller with a thin white band at the top and bottom. A Legal page, which is much longer, shrinks more to fit.
Landscape pages stay landscape, on an A4 sheet turned sideways. Scans, slides exported as PDF, and pages of mixed sizes all come out uniform, which is useful before merging documents into one file for a submission.
Typical cases: a US résumé sent to an employer in London or Bangalore, a course reader from an American university printed in Europe, a contract drafted in Legal size that must be filed on A4, or a set of scanned receipts that came out in different sizes.
Sharp text and a clean print
The pages are not turned into pictures: the text remains real text, sharp when printed and still searchable and selectable. Print the result at 100% or “Actual size” for the margins to come out even, and add the extra margin if the document will be hole-punched, stapled or bound on the left.
Links, form fields and annotations of the original are lost in the new file. If the PDF is a form, fill it in and flatten it with “Flatten PDF” before converting it to A4.
Private and free
The conversion runs in your browser. The PDF is not uploaded and nothing is stored, so you can use it for theses, visa applications, contracts or medical documents. It is free, with no account, no watermark and no limit on use.
If you need Letter, Legal, A3, A5 or a size of your own, open “Resize PDF”. There is also a dedicated page for converting to Letter size.