How to print across multiple pages or make a banner in OSX

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You may remember back in the day of Macintosh SE, System 6,  ImageWriter,  Claris Works  and so on that you could print across several pages on a Macintosh and easily make a banner.  That beautiful feature has been completely missing since OS X was introduced in 2001.

There is a way to print across multiple pages. Save  your document as a PDF file, open it in Acrobat Reader (it’s free), and from there you can print it across multiple pages.

  1. Firstly, you need to download and install  Acrobat Reader.  You can download it from here.
  2.  Next you need to save  the document that you want to print as a PDF file.  To do this open the document in any Application (Pages, Preview etc)  go to the normal print dialogue,  then from the bottom left ‘PDF’ dropdown menu select ‘save as PDF’.
  3. Now click on the pdf file that was just saved and select ‘Open with Acrobat Reader’open with acrobat
  4. In Acrobat reader when you ‘Print’ the document  you will now see a  will window that gives you lots of options. Select ‘Poster’ (not multiple pages!) and it will print over multiple pages!
    multiple
    Print across multiple pages (Click image to enlarge)

     

There are lots of other programs that can do this: TilerSplitPrint, TilePhotos, but they all cost money. Acrobat Reader is free.

 

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Comments

7 responses to “How to print across multiple pages or make a banner in OSX”

  1. ruth

    Very helpful. I need this information to make my visual aids in teaching. Thank you.

  2. James

    This really helped for one of my projects, though its good to note for some that it doesn’t print to the very edge of the paper ( for my printer atleast)

  3. Mat

    All good advice but Adobe Reader doesn’t work with PNG files :(

    1. You can open a PNG file with Preview, then save it as pdf (See step 2 in the article). Then open the pdf in Acrobat Reader.

  4. Jack Waddington

    I was happy to learn of this technique, thank you. In the old PageMaker 7 it was possible to relocate the zero point of the ruler, both vertically and horizontally, in order to get the pages to start at that location. Am I asking too much of Acrobat?

  5. Jack Mayer

    Thanks for this info….pretty stupid of apple to not include this feature………

  6. Tania Smith

    Unfortunately I’m still confused. Where do you tell it how many pages to print over. if I want something to print landscape or 3 pages where do I tell it the number of pages?

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