Mini Booklet printing

[ronc]

I am trying to create 4.25x5.5" booklets to be printed to 8.5 x 11 (letter size) paper. The goal is to output 2 booklets on a page. i.e. one printout results in two copies.

I currently use MS Publisher which does this no problem.

In affinity once I select booklet it prints to the centre of the page and I can no longer choose n-up options to print multiple copies on one page, thus wasting half a sheet of paper for every four pages in the booklet. See attached image for print preview.

We can then cut and staple, no paper waste.

[PaulEC]

Didn't what Dan C suggested work for you?

 

[ronc]

As posted it did not work and there was no further response. I am looking at this product again as it has a new version and still seem to be unable to print multiple copies to one page of a booklet.

[Lee D]

@ronc There hasn't been any changes to the print options available in the apps.

You could workaround the issue by duplicating the pages, so instead of having a document consisting of two pages (front/back). You could duplicate the pages so your document has four (front/back & front/back). When printing you would still use the N-Up option and set both Across and Down to 2.

[ronc]

What I have done at the moment. Is use a page of 4.25x11" and spread of 8.5x11" and create the document twice in an over under and print. This is a little tedious as the document needs to be laid out twice; but it works for now.

I am not totally sure what your solution is.

[jamesgabi]

This feature is certainly one which needs attention. Wasted quite a bit of time trying to figure out the right way of doing it without workarounds.

[Julia R.]

I having the same exact problem.  I have a 4.25 x 5" booklet that is 44 pages long.  In Microsoft publisher I could enter the text for each page and print two booklets with the correct pagination, no problem.  I can't figure out how to do this with Affinity Publisher 2 for the life of me.  I'm on a trial and at this point I'm leery to purchase the product.  I've spent days trying to figure this out.

[h_d]

Hi @Julia R. and welcome!

If you're trying to produce printer's pairs - ie page 1 facing page 44, page 2 facing page 43 etc etc, then Affinity Publisher isn't the ideal tool. 

There are various get-rounds, more or less satisfactory,  many of which you can find if you search these forums for 'Imposition' - the technical term for what you're hoping Affinity Publisher will do for you.

Not for me to second-guess, but I think the output model for Affinity Publisher is geared towards single pages, which would be sent as separate files to a professional printer with their own dedicated imposition software. But that doesn't help people who want to print at home...

 

[lacerto]

As it seems that RGB output is fine with you, you could, if you have a virtual printer driver like PDF/X-Change or Adobe PDF available (Microsoft Print to PDF would work, as well, but defining custom page sizes for it is pretty tricky -- but if you want to try, here is a link; and for more generic setting to enable custom form sizes, here), try as a workaround printing first using booklet layout on a half letter size sheet:

and then either open the resulting booklet format PDF in Publisher, or alternatively, place it in a 8.5x5.5 size document passing through the pages (in case opened and interpreted pages fail to render correctly), and then have a second round printing using the N-Up options to print two copies on a Letter size paper:

This would allow doing this without creating a specific imposition-based layout and might be a useful workflow if you have repeatedly these kinds of tasks.

For projects intended for commercial press this would not work because Affinity apps cannot output color-managed CMYK to virtual printers, so for those situations exporting method with custom manual imposition layouts would be the only choice (if the job is wanted to be done merely with the Affinity suite).

UPDATE: It proved out that specifying a custom paper size for one of the virtual printers makes it available also for Microsoft Print to PDF. If other virtual printers are not available, custom sizes can be defined via Control Panel, as long as definition of custom sizes is made possible (instructions are in the link provided above). After that, following becomes possible:

[Julia R.]

Thank you for your solution and for taking the time to map the solution out.  It is unfortunate that Affinity doesn't make it simpler. With Microsoft Publisher you could easily do what I needed to do, I had hoped Affinity would allow it.  I've seen many people wanting to do what I outlined.  

[Hilltop]

Alternatively, you could try a third-party imposition app, such as Montax Imposer (free for printouts on paper up to A4/Letter).

[KurtJ]

Cut your paper in half first, then adjust the printer to that size.

[ronc]

On 6/17/2025 at 5:37 PM, KurtJ said:

Cut your paper in half first, then adjust the printer to that size.

I hope you are joking. This is definitely not a solution or even a good band-aid to a problem that has a solution, as Microsoft already offers the feature. Unfortunately Microsoft Publisher is only available currently in 365 and is end of life in 2026. As of its end of life date it will be removed from your 365. As such I expect to see a lot more requests for this, hopefully the developers are looking at this and looking into adding it as a feature. This has all sorts of potential difficulties.

[h_d]

9 hours ago, ronc said:

hopefully the developers are looking at this and looking into adding it as a feature

We can all dream.

[PaulEC]

 

On 6/17/2025 at 10:37 PM, KurtJ said:

Cut your paper in half first, then adjust the printer to that size.

Or just use paper that is the correct size to start with! That seems preferable to printing "two-up" and then having to cut the sheets in half.

[ronc]

On 5/25/2025 at 4:30 AM, h_d said:

Hi @Julia R. and welcome!

If you're trying to produce printer's pairs - ie page 1 facing page 44, page 2 facing page 43 etc etc, then Affinity Publisher isn't the ideal tool. 

There are various get-rounds, more or less satisfactory,  many of which you can find if you search these forums for 'Imposition' - the technical term for what you're hoping Affinity Publisher will do for you.

Not for me to second-guess, but I think the output model for Affinity Publisher is geared towards single pages, which would be sent as separate files to a professional printer with their own dedicated imposition software. But that doesn't help people who want to print at home...

 

That was not the question, I have not had a problem with that. Affinity publisher has no issue with imposition until you try to combine it with N-up. The issue as stated comes when trying to do that in an n-up per page, where creating booklets that are smaller than the paper.

[ronc]

On 6/20/2025 at 9:23 PM, PaulEC said:

 

Or just use paper that is the correct size to start with! That seems preferable to printing "two-up" and then having to cut the sheets in half.

I feel you have never purchased paper before. Non regular sized papers are extremely expensive. Purchasing odd size paper (if even available) is not the preferable way to accomplish the task. Cutting is not the issue a paper cutter cuts many sheets quickly. For example the paper size in my conversation (half sheet) is commercially available at about 3-4 times the price of equivalent letter size for the same number of pages. Therefore the cost of paper in the project would be 6-8 times normal.

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, ronc said:

Cutting is not the issue a paper cutter cuts many sheets quickly.

So cut it first, then print it, rather than printing it then cutting it – problem solved!

 

1 hour ago, ronc said:

I feel you have never purchased paper before.

FWIW: I worked in a Reprographics department, for 18 years, where part of my job was purchasing paper stock, for everything from small labels up to A0 rolls.

[ronc]

3 hours ago, PaulEC said:

So cut it first, then print it, rather than printing it then cutting it – problem solved!

 

FWIW: I worked in a Reprographics department, for 18 years, where part of my job was purchasing paper stock, for everything from small labels up to A0 rolls.

Again this isn't a solution. I already have a work around please read my original post. I am not looking for more band aids. Also more sheets is more wear and tear, again trying to be fiscally responsible with our resources as well. I am looking for the resolve using software features or alternatively making a feature recommendation for a future version.

Then you should be well aware of the way paper costs and already know that buy non-standard paper sizes is very expensive.

[thomaso]

10 minutes ago, ronc said:

Also more sheets is more wear and tear,

Hmm? Doesn't a single misprint on a sheet for 4 layout instances (= 4 final cards) actually cause 4 times as much ink + paper waste as a misprint with only 1 single layout on 1 printing sheet/card?

Your thought may be correct as example for an offset printing machine and large sheets of 100 x 70 cm and with high print speed while every machine hour costs. But for a fully manually procedure I can't see an advantage to print multiple pages on larger sheets and cut them after printing.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, ronc said:

Cutting is not the issue a paper cutter cuts many sheets quickly.

FWIW, I have a reasonably heavy duty, manually operated, lever type paper cutter. It works well for a small number of stacked sheets if they are carefully aligned, but with more than 8 or so pages of middle weight stock, the lower the pages in the stack get progressively wider due to the spring-loaded blade's tendency to move slightly farther from the shearing edge. So I would not want to make this a regular practice if keeping all the page at the same dimensions was important.

Industrial type vertical shearing machines do not have this problem but I don't think that is what is being used here.

[ronc]

18 hours ago, thomaso said:

Hmm? Doesn't a single misprint on a sheet for 4 layout instances (= 4 final cards) actually cause 4 times as much ink + paper waste as a misprint with only 1 single layout on 1 printing sheet/card?

Your thought may be correct as example for an offset printing machine and large sheets of 100 x 70 cm and with high print speed while every machine hour costs. But for a fully manually procedure I can't see an advantage to print multiple pages on larger sheets and cut them after printing.

This has nothing to do with the topic. Please stay on topic to be helpful and not spiral the topic.

[ronc]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, I have a reasonably heavy duty, manually operated, lever type paper cutter. It works well for a small number of stacked sheets if they are carefully aligned, but with more than 8 or so pages of middle weight stock, the lower the pages in the stack get progressively wider due to the spring-loaded blade's tendency to move slightly farther from the shearing edge. So I would not want to make this a regular practice if keeping all the page at the same dimensions was important.

Industrial type vertical shearing machines do not have this problem but I don't think that is what is being used here.

This has nothing to do with the topic. Please stick to the topic to be helpful and not spiral the topic.

[thomaso]

25 minutes ago, ronc said:

This has nothing to do with the topic. Please stay on topic to be helpful and not spiral the topic.

I can't follow. To me printing single spreads on single sheets appears to be fully related to the topic. Though it suggests another than the requested workflow, it still achieves the desired result ...

On 5/31/2024 at 4:32 PM, ronc said:

We can then cut and staple, no paper waste.

... but with less complexity: The only difference seems to be the reversed order of printing & cutting and the resulting reduced requirement for certain printing options.

[lacerto]

On 6/28/2025 at 2:56 PM, thomaso said:

Though it suggests another than the requested workflow, it still achieves the desired result ...

Workarounds are the second nature of software with internal limits, and welcome in lack of anything better, and often just needing a bit of re-thinking and flexibility.

But having features like ones asked in this topic for ages in PC software like Microsoft Publisher -- possibly also in Serif PagePlus??? -- understandably causes frustration in users who are accustomed to create advanced projects and finish them without needing to settle with tricks and compromises (and often without help of 3rd parties). I think it was possible to create custom signatures already in CorelDRAW 1.0 in 1989 (but  I might well remember wrong):