Print Your Own Booklets

Booklet printing can be extremely useful when you consider taking printouts of documents that consist of fifty or more pages. Consider a hundred page ebook that needs to be printed. What most of us would normally think of doing would be to take a print of all hundred pages. Now, when you print in a booklet format the number of pages required is almost halved and you also have the freedom of converting your prints into compact booklets.

There are several ways of proceeding with this task, but if you do not have any intention of spending money you can simply follow the method shown below. All you will need is a registered copy of MS Office. Keep in mind that the method shown applies to Word 2007, though the process should work for any version of MS Office. The only difference might be in the page setup dialog.

Create booklets using MS Word

STEP 1: Open the document or ebook that needs to be printed. Click on “file| Page setup”. You should be in the margins tab by default. If not, select "Margins". Now, set the margins as follows – Top: 0.8”, Bottom: 0.6”, Inside: 0.3”, Outside: 0.7”, Gutter: 0.6”, Gutter position: Left. Once you have set the
margins, change the orientation to “Landscape” and choose “Book Fold” from the “Multiple pages” drop down menu. Leave “Sheets per booklet” to auto. Now click on the Layout tab and change the header and footer to 0.39” and 0.25”. If your document includes pictures, make sure that they are resized before a print command is given; else they tend to get cropped from the edges.

STEP 2: Once you are done setting up the page you will now need to make a few changes in the print menu. Click on “Properties” and select “paper orientation” as “Landscape”, and change paper size to “A4”. Now go to “Extras” and select “Print odd pages”. Make sure “Manual duplex” mode is tagged on the print menu. Also make sure that the tray is empty. Click on ‘OK’ to confirm. Manual printing instructions: To be able to get page number 2 on the opposite side you will need to feed in the page that has already been printed with the even side or number facing the printer tray.

For example, if you have a total of 32 pages to print, the first print will have page 1 and 32 printed on the same side of the sheet. The next print will have page 2 and 31. So to print page 2 opposite page 1 you will need to place the paper with page 32 facing the printer tray. After you have fi nished printing all odd pages return to the print dialog and select “Print even pages”.