# Help with Adobe Distiller **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 7, 2003, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-with-adobe-distiller/180345 "2003-06-07T21:49:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-with-adobe-distiller/180345/1 "2003-06-07T21:49:10Z")
I am trying to enlarge the pages of a PDF file. I have cropped them and when printing I have no problem getting it to print larger by choosing, depending on the version of the reader, either “Fit to page”, or “Expand small pages to page size”. But I would like to distribute this file to people without having to give them instructions, especially instructions that depend on the version. I have looked through the documentation of the Distiller and I cannot find a way to do this. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-with-adobe-distiller/180345/2 "2003-06-08T00:27:27Z")
Did you happen to have created the PDF yourself? If not, I think you might be out of luck … unless Distiller can make another PDF out of an existing PDF. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-with-adobe-distiller/180345/3 "2003-06-08T11:36:07Z")
The pdf was created in the following way: Scan a book, convert it to pdf (I don’t know how that was done; I paid a student to do it and I think he used software that came with the scanner), use pdflatex in conjunction with pdfpages to put it in 2 up format (the original was on pages that were approximately 5.5 x 8.5). At this point, the original, not in very large point size to begin with appears to have shrunk and I decided to enlarge it. This works, but I wanted to avoid having to give users instructions to enlarge on printing. I guess I will have to. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-with-adobe-distiller/180345/4 "2003-06-08T11:57:35Z")
I had a different problem with Distiller, and I’l post it here in the hope that someone else may have run into it. We were using mapping software, and printing maps on a laser printer at 11"x17" size. After printing these maps I would run the mapping software’s output through Distiller so as to keep the maps in a common format for future reference. We then started printing maps on a large-format plotter, producing 36"x48" maps (really cool!). I attempted to run these maps through Distiller for the same reason, but the program would error out every time. I have seen maps of this size in PDF format, but I was never able to produce any. Any ideas?