Making Booklets From PDF Files

Are you trying to print out the contents of a PDF document in booklet format?

A colleague of mine just told me about a very long and drawn out process he went through to create a booklet for his work. The original file he was given for the project had been created with Microsoft Publisher. He, being a Mac Guy, was using Quark for page design. Overall, it just did not go well.

He copied and pasted elements from the original file into his new Quark file, but ran into trouble trying to impose the pages for printing (this is the re-ordering of the individual booklet pages so that the printed pages, when stacked together and stapled down the middle, will be in the correct reading order.)

To print a typical booklet, 4 pages are combined and printed onto a single sheet of paper - 2 pages on the front and 2 on the back. When all of the printed pages are stacked together and folded, the individual booklet pages should be in the correct reading order.

My colleague went ‘old school.’ He printed out all of the individual pages and taped them together in the right order for printing. Then, he photocopied the results and sent them to the printer to print the finished copies. Technology to the rescue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q2ueGUNtKY

Watch The Complete Process Demonstrated

Simple Method To Print Booklets From PDF Files

A much less labor intensive, and higher quality, method is available. This is what I recommended to him:

Print a copy of the booklet in normal reading order to a PDF file (this is easy to do and can be accomplished with free software)
Using a program like CutePDF Pro ($50), or the PDF Snake plugin ($340) for Adobe Acrobat, open the file and use the booklet function to reorder the pages
Print a test copy by printing all of the odd pages first, flipping the paper stack, and then printing all of the even pages (each page in the file will contain 2 booklet pages side-by-side and alternate between the front and back pages)
Send the new PDF file to the printer

The computer can do all of the hard work and the results are great. Whenever I want to print out an e-book, I do this step first. I have stacks of booklets created in this fashion.

If you are creating the book in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, you can set up booklet printing inside the software for each new document. The pages will automatically be reordered when you print. There is also a product called Clickbook that intercepts the file when you hit the print button and reorders the pages before sending them on to the printer. It will work with any program that is capable of printing. The price is comparable to CutePDF Pro.

CutePDF Pro and PDF Snake both offer a free trial version. Hardcore users will appreciate the features of PDF Snake, but most folks will do fine with the cheaper CutePDF Pro.

If you have questions about this process or want a more detailed tutorial, leave a comment and let us know.

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