# Draw true page border

Is there a way to draw a rectangle around every page?

The problem is that my document (a Ph.D. thesis) is in a funny format (16x24cm). So to print it centered on A4 paper (for reviewing) I played with the page layout.

However, I would like to have indication of the true page size with means of a rectangle drawn around each page. Is it possible? BTW. I use pdflatex.

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You can use the crop package to place your pages on a A4 paper. It can center and frame it for you:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperwidth=16cm,paperheight=24cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[a4,frame,center]{crop}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text
\begin{document}
\lipsum
\lipsum
\lipsum
\end{document}


It looks like this:

If you don't like the info line above the frame use the noinfo package option.

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Precisely! Thank you :) –  ronszon Apr 6 '11 at 5:46
Ui, the package works great, but synctex gets confused... Any idea how to make both crop and synctex-pdf-linking to work together? –  ronszon Apr 11 '11 at 16:28
@ronszon: Sorry, I can't help you here. I never used synctex so far. You might ask this as a follow-up question. –  Martin Scharrer Apr 11 '11 at 16:30
Ok. Thanks! I'll try... –  ronszon Apr 11 '11 at 17:19
@MartinScharrer is there a way to change color and thickness of this borer? –  Dion Jul 25 '14 at 22:06

I had a similar issue with my own thesis. The way I dealt with it issue was to use features of the PDF format. PDF allows a file to specify several different boxes: TrimBox, MediaBox, ArtBox, CropBox, BleedBox. Relevant to this situation is MediaBox: the size of the paper you are printing on (in your case A4); and TrimBox: the size of the page after trimming. Many PDF viewers (Adobe Reader for example) are able to display these boxes optionally. I don't know of any packages that make use of this feature (would make a nice modification to geometry or crop), so I did it by hand: \pdfpageattr{/TrimBox[9 9 621 801]} where if I recall correctly the units are in pts. You can see a result here, where I wanted the final page to be US Letter size, but to have a 0.125" bleed before trimming. If you are using Adobe Reader, then to show the boxes use Edit -> Preferences -> Page Display -> Show art, trim, & bleed boxes.

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If you are using geometry for setting the page parameters, then add the option showframe or showcrop

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geometry doesn't seem to have a showcrop option. –  Faheem Mitha Oct 2 '11 at 5:52
@FaheemMitha Version 5.6 has it. –  egreg Oct 2 '11 at 9:07
egreg: Ok. I am using 4.2 (Tex Live 2009). –  Faheem Mitha Oct 2 '11 at 13:18
This way is excellent to remove (large amounts of) badboxes from the draft of a (large sized) document. –  MattAllegro Aug 5 '14 at 7:32

The crop packages does it for the general case. See also What is the easiest way to get borders around a page in LaTeX? and in particular the solution for the Memoir document class.

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try using this :

\usepackage{pgf}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
%
\pgfpagesdeclarelayout{boxed}
{
\edef\pgfpageoptionborder{3pt}
}
{
\pgfpagesphysicalpageoptions
{%
logical pages=1,%
}
\pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{1}
{
border code=\pgfsetlinewidth{0.5pt}\pgfstroke,%
border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
resized width=.95\pgfphysicalwidth,%
resized height=.95\pgfphysicalheight,%
center=\pgfpoint{.5\pgfphysicalwidth}{.5\pgfphysicalheight}%
}%
}
\pgfpagesuselayout{boxed}
\setlength{\parindent}{2cm}

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Can you extend the question by some explanations and maybe a screenshot? –  Johannes_B Oct 12 '14 at 14:23
Ideally, write up a minimal working example (MWE) to show its use, rather than just code snippets. –  Werner Oct 12 '14 at 14:35