Letter vs Legal Paper Size
Legal adds 3 inches of height to Letter’s 8.5-inch width.
Print Legal on Letter
Your page after scaling
No edges cropped- Printed width × height
- 169.6 × 279.4 mm
- Crop from each side
- 0 mm
- Crop from top / bottom
- 0 mm each
At 100%, this page would lose 38.1 mm from top and bottom.
Compare the outlines
Same width, three extra inches
Letter is 8.5 × 11 inches and US Legal is 8.5 × 14 inches. Legal adds 76.2 mm to the height. On a centered Letter sheet at 100% with 0 mm margins, a Legal page extends 38.1 mm past both the top and bottom edges.
Keep the text readable and the tray correct
Reducing Legal to Letter at 78.57% preserves the whole page and makes the text smaller. To keep the original text and form fields at 100%, load Legal paper and choose Legal in the print dialog. A printer’s support for Letter does not establish support for a 14-inch sheet; check the tray’s size setting.
Set up the print dialog
- Match the paper. Select the size loaded in the tray and choose portrait orientation.
- Choose the goal. Use Fit for a whole page, or enter the preview’s percentage as Custom Scale. For measured templates, choose Actual size or 100%.
- Check the preview. Center the page and compare the cropped edges. In Acrobat, these controls are under Page Sizing & Handling → Size.
Check your printed size
Print the file matching your paper at Actual size / 100%. Measure the 100 mm rulers and the 1-inch square. Every grid cell is 10 × 10 mm.
Common questions
Is 8.5 × 13 paper US Legal?
US Legal is 8.5 × 14 inches. A sheet measuring 8.5 × 13 inches needs its own matching paper setting; it is not the Legal size used in this comparison.
Does Letter fill a Legal sheet?
A portrait Letter page fits at 100% with the same width. With no margins and centered placement, the unused height is 1.5 inches at the top and 1.5 inches at the bottom. Enlarging it would overflow the width.
