My friend Dave has just moved across to a mac and he tells me that in Microsoft publisher you can use a booklet template to make a booklet. Publisher did this automatically. With Pages in OS X there is no such built in option to do this automatically, but there is a great little program called ‘create booklet’ that will do it for you when you go to print the document.
By booklet I mean A4 pages folded in half to make an A5 booklet that you staple in the middle. To do this all the pages need to be re-ordered, for example, page 8 goes near page 1, page 2 near page 7 and so on.
You need to download a little program called ‘Create Booklet’ which will add an extra option to your printing window to allow you to do this.
You can download it directly here or you can try the original webpage here.
After you’ve downloaded it, Click on the ‘install- Create Booket PDF Service’
This will install an extra menu item in your printer menu to be able to print booklets.
After you’ve done this, go into Pages (or Microsoft Word or whatever program you are trying to print from) and select print, like you are going to normally print a document. But instead of pressing print (in the bottom right corner of the window) select the ‘PDF’ button in the bottom left of the window, and click on ‘Create Booklet’
Your document will automatically be made into a booklet.
It will open in a new window, and you can either ‘save’ it as a PDF file (to email to someone or print out later) or you can print it as a booklet to your printer.
You then need to select the ‘double sided’ box and select ‘short edge binding’ not ‘long edge binding’. Short edge binding means you want to fold the booklet along the shorter edge of the A4 page. If you select ‘long edge binding’ it will print ht back page upside down.
When you are designing a booklet, it will be printed smaller than usual. The A4 page you see on your screen will be printed on 1/2 an A4 page when you make a booklet, so you ‘ll make all the text a bit bigger than usual. Eg you may choose to use 18 point font instead of 12.
Note: There was an application called ‘Cocoa Booklet’ that used to do this but it doesn’t work in Snow Leopard, this is the new way of doing it.
Note: If you want to publish a book, and need a more professional binding solution try this program (it’s not free).
Create Booklet and El Capitan
Some people have reported that ‘ create booklet’ does not work with El Capitan. I can verify that it does work perfectly with El Capitan. If it’s not working can I suggest you try reinstalling it.
Also, I think there are two versions running around…
There is the paid version by ‘TheKeptPromise’ available from the Apple App store and from here, which is called “create booklet 1.2”. It costs $15. It may not work with El Capitan.
I can verify that ‘create booklet 1.1’, the free version by Christoph Vogelbusch does work with El Capitan. Last time I checked it was available from here.
This doesn’t seem to work any more on El Capitan. Anyone got any solutions?
I have used this app in the past with great success. Then I upgraded to El Capitan:( When I did my December newsletter in Pages and selected Create booklet, it processed the pages but didn’t produce the booklet! Tried it a few times. Nada. Even repurchased the app and re-installed. Still nothing. Any suggestions? Page is version 5.6, Mac Capitan 10.11
I have just gone from PC to Mac, with Word II and found that none of my brochures open now – ALL my advertising is in this format. I spent a frustrating day writing a brochure on a Word Template that is tabloid in size, and so won’t print the text at the size I see it – only bits of it. Nothing works. We just put El Capitan on and I don’t know what to do now. I am livid that all today was wasted.
Even though I hate Microsoft Word, I have found the compatibility between Microsoft Word on the Mac and PC to be exceptional. I haven’t had a file that has not come nicely into my Macintosh version of Word. So you might be doing something wrong. Have you got the latest version of office on your Mac? The version of Word that I currently have is version 15.15
Thank you so much for this app! If only I knew sooner of this app, I wouldn’t have gotten so much trouble for the past 3 years designing and printing my church’s annual report in booklet form. Working flawlessly with microsoft Word mac OS X 10.9
What do I do if there is no short edge binding option? All of the steps you have provided here have helped tremendously, but when I open the print menu the only options are:
A4
A5
A5 Long Edge
A6
B5
B6
And various other options that I know are wrong like “envelope” and “3 X 5”
Thanks!
Short edge binding is a checkbox that appears after you select double sided printing. It is not a page size like A4.
Hi
Ive just installed the create booklet app on to my Mac with El Capitan. It works perfectly except…… when using the 2 sided function,pages 2 & 3 are printed upside down, 4 & 5 are printed right way up & 6 & 7 upside down and so on.
What am I doing wrong, has anyone else experienced this?
Toggle the long-edge-binding or short-edge-binding option.
Thanks Wayne,
Did that and now its printed out perfectly. I thought I had done that when I chose double sided printing so don’t know what went wrong, but alls well that ends well.
Thanks for your help
Hi there, please could you help me?
I bought Create Booklet thinking it would make 4-up booklet in portrait,
each page about 4.25 x 5.5
with borders at top of each page of .25,
at bottom of each page .75,
outside page edges .25,
and gutter .45 or so for ea page.
But all I can get is 2 much larger pages side by side, landscape. [4 pages to an 8.5×11 page].
What I need are four pages on each side of paper sheet of 8.5×11 equalling 8 pages per 8.5×11 sheet.
Maybe this app doesnt do that?
For the two pages landscape front and back it is so easy, but they are too large for our projects.
I hope you can help this grandma.
Thank you in advance
Create booklet cannot do that.
Instead, go to ‘Layout’ in the print dialog, then select “Pages per Sheet:” and choose 4, that might do what you are after.
thanks wayne, appreciate it. I tried it, and it does do it but the margins are hinky and the print even though set at 16, came out about 6pt.
Have to find a solution, but thanks for answering
What if I wanted to print on legal sized paper (8.5 x 14), not letter size? Do the same steps apply?
[…] THIS has been a great extension to have on my computer. Rather than trying to fumble to make all of my pages symmetrical and nicely lined up I just make regular 8.5×11 pages and save a booklet! […]
Hey, I just want to thank you for this article. It is very useful indeed. I used MacBook with MS Word 2011 and tried to print a booklet on my own. Most tutorials explain well how to do it on MS Word 2007. But not for Mac users. I appreciate it very much. Now, I can even make a booklet using Pages instead of MS Word.
I tried installing the CreateBooklet1.1.dmg and go ahead print my documents, choose the create booklet option on PDF button on my print page. A while later a PDF document popped out on the Preview App. It’s just that I can’t figure out where that file is located?
So, I just exported the PDF file to create a new pdf file.
createbooket seemed great at first but seems that it has issues re plugins for HP printers. HP laser jet pro is having a hard time recognising the create booklet pdf’s.
I installed the Create Booklet plug in, but when I click on create booklet in the Print menu I get a pop up window that says processing, but then it disappears and does not appear in a new window. I assume a new file has been created, but I cannot find it. I am running MasOSX El Capitan with Microsoft Word for Mac 2011.
Any ideas?
I’m having the same issue, i cant find the PDF anywhere. Can anyone point me in the right direction.
Thanks!
Gavin
The output is saved in the folder /tmp
There is an option in the File menu “Move To…”, clicking on it will create a dialog window to select a folder where you want to move it.
Hope it would meet your requirement. :-)
Hi, I’m using the new version of Create Booklet (https://itunes.apple.com/app/create-booklet-2/id1350225911) with El Capitan and with High Sierra and it works perfectly for me. Love the new Mini Booklet option and did some nice booklets for my niece. 🙂
This is not free – it’s 29$
I was having problems printing a booklet A5 size page onto A4 back and front – the pages printed upside down as you said -but was solved by your advice with the “short edged binding” ! Many thanks. Bernard
We just installed OS Mojave at the church where I prepare the bulletin. Now, we can’t print the bulletin in the way we used to on v. 11. The Create Booklet option is available from the PDF drop-down menu, in Print, but no booklet appears on the desktop. I checked in /tmp files this morning and it’s not there. I was able to work around this problem for this week’s bulletin, but the pages did not collate. All the page 2s, 4s, 6s, etc. printed individually and I had to collate by hand. Help!
I’ve just written an article for you about this. Thanks for contacting me about it.
https://www.macintoshhowto.com/printing/is-create-booklet-broken-in-mojave.html
Thank you, Wayne. This seems like a fairly simple solution, even for me, as a long-time Windows user. The transition to a Mac hasn’t been easy, but the pastor is skilled and he’s a patient teacher. I can’t wait to go to the office next week and try this solution. I’ll be sure to post my results.
Many thanks for this very useful little program. My solution had been to save as pdf, then drag each page manually to a folder (renaming them: ‘page 1’, ‘page 2’, etc., then drawing them into a landscape page Pages document in the required order: 8 + 1, 2 + 7, 6 + 3, etc. It works, but it is time-consuming and inconvenient should it be necessary to amend or update the original document. You have my appreciation for your efforts.
it doesn’t pull up the pdf version. it shows that it creates it but the pdf doesn’t show up
Since it doesn’t work anymore, I’d like to delete it from the menu. How?
High Sierra user here – How does short-edge binding work? When trying to print the PDF directly I can click Two Sided, but there is no further option for Long or Short-Edge binding.
I’ve also tried selecting Short-End Binding from the Layout menu within Word, and then selecting PDF to create the booklet, but it still prints with Long-Edge binding.
Previous comments say to toggle to Short-End Binding, but I can’t seem to find the option?
For me it orders the pages wrong so it doesnt end up solving the issue. Any reason this could be happening? Running montery