Margins – Change \textwidth and \textheight Mid-Document in LaTeX

margins

I set my \textwidth and \textheight in the preamble and would like to change both for some pages. How can this be done? E.g., the following example for \textwidth appears to work for the page number, but not for the text:

\documentclass{article} 
\textwidth=5cm \textheight=5cm
\begin{document}
A \hfill B
\eject \textwidth=10cm
A \hfill B
\end{document}

Output (true to scale):

Best Answer

You can use \newgeometry and \restoregeometry from the geometry package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[textwidth=5cm,textheight=5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-2]
\newgeometry{textwidth=10cm,textheight=10cm}
\lipsum[1-4]
\restoregeometry
\lipsum[1-2]

\end{document}

Related Solutions

margins – How to Force LaTeX to Put Even Pages on Right in Documentclass Article

With the article class and the twoside class option enabled, the outer page margins will be twice as large as the inner margins (conforming to rather venerable typographic rules ;-)), and there is no binding correction. It seems you assumed LaTeX would horizontally center the textblock and add some binding correction, and so you took even (left-hand) pages for odd (right-hand) pages and vice versa.

As you cannot use another class, try the geometry package and its hcentering and bindingoffset options -- this should result in the desired margins.

\documentclass[twoside]{article}

\usepackage[hcentering,bindingoffset=8mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-12]

\end{document}

Margins – Change \textwidth After First Page in scrlttr2

Here is now a working example. It still requires a manual \pagebreak in the main text of the letter, but according to explanations by @DavidCarlisle, see above, this is at good as it can get without resorting to more powerful systems like luatex.

\documentclass{scrlttr2}%
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{lipsum,afterpage}%
\setlength{\textwidth}{125mm}%
\firstfoot{%
  \afterpage{%
    \global\setlength{\textwidth}{17cm}%
    \global\setlength{\columnwidth}{\textwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\hsize}{\columnwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\linewidth}{\hsize}}%
}

\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Receipient}
  \opening{Dear receipient,}
  \lipsum[1-2]
  \pagebreak % enfore the page break, otherwise afterpage will take
  % effect too late, i.e. after first broken paragraph on page 2.
  \lipsum[3-12]
  \closing{Yours}
\end{letter}
\end{document}

In this example the text body on the first page has a width of 12.5cm and on of 17cm on all following pages. If you want this to work in documents containing multiple letters, you should reset \textwidth on every "first page," e.g. using

\firsthead{%
    \global\setlength{\textwidth}{12.5cm}%
    \global\setlength{\columnwidth}{\textwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\hsize}{\columnwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\linewidth}{\hsize}%
}

in the preamble.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

margins – How to Force LaTeX to Put Even Pages on Right in Documentclass Article

Margins – Change \textwidth After First Page in scrlttr2

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