Booklet maker

A multiple of 4. Each sheet is folded once and carries four pages — two on the front, two on the back — so 4, 8, 12, 16 and so on. A 13-page PDF becomes 16 pages: the booklet maker adds the 3 blank pages at the end, before the back cover, or after the front cover, as you choose.

Choose A4 as the sheet. Each A4 page is scaled to fit half an A4 sheet, which is A5 (148 × 210 mm): A5 is A4 reduced by 1 ÷ √2, so the pages are printed at about 71% with nothing cut off and no space wasted. Print on both sides, flip on short edge, fold the stack in half and staple at the fold.

Choose US Letter as the sheet. Half a Letter sheet is 5½ × 8½ in; a Letter page fits it at about 65%, with roughly 0.7 in to spare at the top and bottom, because the two shapes differ. For pages that fill the half exactly, set up the document at 5½ × 8½ in to begin with. On 11 × 17 in Tabloid paper, Letter pages print at full size.

The booklet’s sheet is landscape, and you turn it over sideways, like the page of a book — about its short edge. With Flip on long edge the back comes out upside down. If your printer only offers the long edge, choose “Both sides, long edge only”: every back is then printed upside down in the PDF so that it comes out the right way up.

Yes. Choose “One side: I turn the stack” and download two PDFs. Print the fronts, put the printed stack back in the tray without changing its order, and print the backs. Try it with a short document first: if the backs come out upside down, tick the upside-down option; if page 2 lands behind the last sheet, tick reverse order.

When a thick stack is folded, the inner sheets stick out further at the open edge than the outer ones, so trimming that edge straight takes more off the inner pages, and their outer margins shrink. Creep moves the pages of each inner sheet a little towards the fold to make up for it: about the paper’s thickness per sheet, roughly 0.1 mm for 80 gsm office paper. A booklet of a few sheets that is not trimmed does not need it.

Sections of a book, each a small booklet of a few sheets folded together. A thick book does not fold well as one stack, so it is printed as signatures of, say, 4 to 8 sheets, each folded separately; the signatures are then stacked in order and sewn or glued at the spine. Turn on Signatures, choose the sheets per signature, and every signature is put in its own folding order.

Use it if you have it: Acrobat and Acrobat Reader on a computer print a PDF as a booklet (Booklet under Page Sizing & Handling), and Word has Book fold for its own documents. But the PDF viewers in browsers, macOS Preview and phones have no booklet option of their own, and Word’s works on Word documents, not PDFs. This tool gives you a PDF that is already in booklet order, so it prints from any of them at Actual size.

Nothing is uploaded: the PDF is read and rewritten in your browser, and the link from “Continue on another device” carries only the settings. A PDF protected by a password or by restrictions on changes cannot be rearranged; save or print a copy without the protection, if you have the right to, and use that.