Is ‘Create Booklet’ broken in Mojave?

The “Create Booklet” PDF action stopped working when Mojave was released. It seems to be to do with Apple requiring an increased level of application signing. What this means is that the old version of Create Booklet (that was free) that I wrote about here no longer works. You need to download the new version from the Apple App Store. (It costs $20). I’m not sure if it’s worth $20 just to be able to make a booklet. It may be worth it to you. In my opinion it should be a feature that the built in OSX print driver can do. But for now I cannot find any free options to do this.

Everything below here is now obsolete but I have kept it here as a reference.

The Create Booklet PDF action stopped working when Mojave was released, but it’s not broken! It’s part of the set of ‘security’ features that Apple introduced in Mojave. Here’s how to get it going again.

All you have to do to get Create Booklet working again is open the ‘Automator’ App and under the ‘Automator’ menu and click ‘Third Party Automator Actions’ and then enable them.

The way I found this was to Open the OSX ‘Console’ application and then I tried to print using Create Booklet. The following message came up in Console:

Error executing PDF Workflow /Library/PDF Services/Create Booklet.workflow: The operation couldn’t be completed. This workflow contains the action “Create Booklet”, which is provided by a third party. Third party actions must be explicitly enabled To enable third party actions, open Automator and choose Third Party Actions from the Automator menu.

It’s rather rude from Apple that they hide this error message away in a console with no hint of what’s happening! But thankfully there’s an easy fix.

 

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17 responses to “Is ‘Create Booklet’ broken in Mojave?”

  1. John

    Hi there,

    I’ve followed your instructions however when I select the create booklet option the print dialogue box closes and nothing else happens. Any idea if it created the booklet or not and where I would find it?

    Reply
  2. Wayne

    Do what I did – have a look at the Console results.

    Reply
    1. Kach

      Hi and Happy New Year!

      Dido to what John said. Additionally, I did what you did… I think, anyway. I specifically enabled third party automator actions.

      When I select the create booklet option the print dialogue box still just closes and nothing happens. Thoughts?

      Reply
  3. Chad

    Hello Wayne,

    Happy New Year.

    Dido to what John said. I did the same with the same result. Then did what you said for him to do I looked at the console results.

    I even went to Accessibility in Security & Privacy in System Preferences and tried enabling the Automator in Privacy. Still getting the same results. Any thoughts?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  4. Charlie

    Looks like I’m still having trouble too. When I run Console, this is what I get (I’m on a work computer, logged in as myself and I’m not any type of system administrator):

    Error executing PDF Workflow /Library/PDF Services/PDF create Booklet.workflow: The operation couldn’t be completed. 2019-01-02 13:57:51.748 automator[3013:49904] Cache location entry for /Library/Automator in cache file at /Users/crc57/Library/Caches/com.apple.automator.actionCache-user-standardLocations.plist is not valid: (null)
    2019-01-02 13:57:51.789 automator[3013:49904] Cache location entry for /Applications/Photos.app in cache file at /Users/crc57/Library/Caches/com.apple.automator.actionCache-bundleLocations.plist is not valid: (null)
    Automator could not run the workflow because one or more actions were not loaded.
    The action “PDF Booklet” could not be loaded because its executable is not loadable.
    (error code 2)

    Reply
    1. Nic Parham

      I get exactly the same issue as Charlie!

      Reply
  5. Marcia P

    Hello, Wayne: I apologize for taking so long to get back to you about this issue and your solution. When I told the pastor at the church where I work about enabling third-party automator actions, he said we didn’t have any third-party software for creating booklets. In the meantime, he had discovered by clicking the up arrow next to number of copies in the Print menu (i.e., making it more than “1”), the Collate check box, and the word “collate,” appear from nowhere. This enables the printer to collate the pages in a booklet. You can’t just type the number of copies into the appropriate blank; you have to start by clicking at least once on the up arrow to make “Collate” appear. Then you can type in however many copies you need to print. Talk about a function not being intuitive! Thank you again for writing the article above in response to my initial question.

    Reply
  6. Giacomo

    I did enable third parties automator actions, but Create Booklet still doesn’t work for me!

    Reply
  7. Scott

    When I use old free version of Create Booklet, the script goes to a Print dialog, creates the document, but then it never opens and does not appear to be saved anywhere on the desktop. When attempting the directions found at (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/210359/booklet-creation-el-capitan), I do need to enable Third Party, but the next issue appears to be an invalid signature. Anyone been able to find a solution to that?

    Reply
  8. Sera Que

    Hi. I’m having the same issues. Ever since I updated to Mojave, Create Booklet has stopped functioning. The “Create Booklet” is still there, it appears to save, but nothing comes up. This is a really wonderful app (at least before Mojave). I hope there’s a solution soon.

    Reply
  9. Wayne

    Update: it looks like as well and truly broken with no fix.
    I’ve written a new article about this here:
    https://www.macintoshhowto.com/pages-and-publishing/how-to-print-to-a-pdf-booklet-in-os-x-mojave.html

    Reply
  10. Robert Schoenburg

    How can I remove the Create Booklet option from the PDF print menu?

    Reply
    1. Wayne

      Go to Library/PDF Services and you will see all the items. Delete the ones you do not want.
      (This is Library, not ~/Library)

      Reply
  11. Rich

    I know I’m late responding to this, but I’m just running into the problem (I upgrade late :)). For what it’s worth, the problem is the automator action “open images in Preview” which no longer seems to accept a PDF file as input. A workaround is to delete that action from the workflow, then in the “Create Booklet” action, simply choose a convenient output directory. The workflow will now run correctly and save the new booklet pdf to the specified directory. You’ll then have to manually open it to print, but otherwise everything else remains the same.

    Reply
    1. Andrew

      Thanks Rich for your tip on this problem – once I had worked out to how delete the automator action by unlocking the containing folder and workflow document it worked a treat – brilliant!

      Reply
  12. P. Rutkowski

    There IS way to fix ‘Create Booklet’ workflow!
    You must enable 3rd party actions AND change ‘open images in Preview’ action to ‘open Finder items’ using Preview – now everything will work! (I don’t know the exact name of new action in English since I’m using macOS in Polish right now)

    Reply
  13. sabrina

    Hi my booklet is not working

    Reply

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