Need to remove an old header or footer before adding a new one? Whether you need to strip page numbers, dates, or company text from a PDF, here are the best free methods depending on your situation.
If the header or footer occupies a fixed margin area, use the Crop PDF tool (pdfeditor.onl/crop-pdf) to remove that margin from all pages. Set a top crop percentage to remove the header or a bottom crop percentage to remove the footer.
Tip: This works best when the header/footer is in a clear white margin that does not overlap any body content.
For digitally created PDFs where the header/footer is a text layer, open the OCR & Edit tool (pdfeditor.onl/ocr-pdf). The tool detects text blocks — locate the header/footer block, delete it, and download the updated PDF.
In the Add Image tool (pdfeditor.onl/add-image-pdf), upload a white PNG image sized to cover the header or footer area. Place it over the header/footer region on each page. This paints over the existing text without cropping the page size.
Use Crop when the header/footer is entirely in a white margin. Use OCR Edit when you want to delete specific text blocks cleanly. Use the white image overlay when neither of the above options is practical and you only need to visually hide the content.
With the Crop method, cropping applies to all pages uniformly. With the OCR Edit method, you can delete text blocks page by page for selective removal.
The Crop method reduces page size slightly. The OCR Edit and white image methods preserve the original page dimensions.