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.
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