Stitched book

[GrahamMYC]

I am producing a book on 2-sided A4 pages. In the past I have printed these and used a comb binder. I have been offered an opportunity to print on A3 sheets and stitch. It is an attractive option. Is there any software in Publisher that will arrange the pages for printing in this way?  Likely to take a week or so.

[thomaso]

Yes, it's in the print options > Click on "Range and Scale" and select "Document Layout" from the pulldown menu. In the appearing "Model:" pulldown menu select "Booklet".

[MikeW]

Stitching usually involves signatures. Ask how the printer wants the pdf. They should be producing the imposition from a pdf of single pages, which will arrange the pdf in signatures of 8, 12, 16 or whatever multiples of 4 pages.

[GrahamMYC]

Thanks both. Most informative. It is something I have never doe before and at my age (77) having difficulties getting my mind round it. 

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, GrahamMYC said:

Thanks both. Most informative. It is something I have never doe before and at my age (77) having difficulties getting my mind round it.  

You might try it first with just a few pages, lets say 8. To get 2 sheets (4 pages on each sheet).

Some printers (machines) print sheets in reversed order, some don't. That could result in an unwanted order in the output paper stack/pile, which you then manually would have to sort sheet by sheet. Your desired view of the sheet order in the output stack:
• on top of the stack: the 2 middle pages of your brochure and,
• on the stack's bottom: the Title page + last page.

p.s.: As you called it "book" (not booklet or brochure): note that, unlike the comb or glue binding, with staples ...
• the total number of pages is limited
• when folded, the inner sheets protrude from the stack on the edges parallel to the fold. You need to cut the folded stack to make the pages easy to turn around.

[GrahamMYC]

More useful advice. Much appreciated, thankyou

[GrahamMYC]

So far so good -well almost!

I am trying to produce a booklet based on a document of A4 pages, with a 2 page spread, starting on the right. Clearly this needs to print on A3

I have a friend who has an A3 printer. So the easy option is to get a driver for his printer. and install it on my computer It is an OKI C9000 . But if I try to download the driver for this printer it will cost $10 with no guarantee it will work. This would mean connecting my computer to his printer.

The second option would be  for him to load Affinity Publisher onto his computer, which he is not too keen to do. (I am working on it!)

A third option, which we tried, would be to construct a booklet file by copying page by page  from my document ( 2 page spread, start on right) to a new document that would produce the booklet result (two page spread, start on left and work out manually which pages go where!). It does not work. Let me explain. If you have text that flows from one page to another, then when you copy a page including such text (especially when it is not the first page), it copies the whole story, not just the text visible on the page. What we need is something equivalent to the image "copy flattened" - i.e. when you copy from a page in Publisher it would copy the text that appears on the page, not the whole story. There could be a workaround which involves isolating the text on each page manually, and breaking the flow links. That, however, would be slow, tedious and error prone. That is unless any of you bright guys can offer an alternative

If this explanation is not clear enough, I will try to produce a video demonstrating the problem. Plse let me know.

In the meantime I offer 2 screen grabs

1: The basic APub document page, showing the right hand page selected

2: What happens when you copy that page and try to paste the result on a right hand page. Note that the whole story has been selected and flows on

[GrahamMYC]

By the way, the sketch image crossing the two pages does not copy easily. That is a separate issue which we solved by another means. For the moment,leave that to one side.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

Graham,

With regard to the overset text, isn't the solution there to click the eyeball icon at the lower right edge of the frame to hide the overset text, and then to click the red arrow icon at the edge of the frame to then manually re-thread the text through the remaining pasted text frames?

Having said that, it is probably wiser to use the print command to produce a properly page-imposed PDF.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

With regard to producing a properly page-imposed PDF from Publisher, here's how I would do it on a Mac. (Hopefully the same print to PDF option is available to you on a Windows machine.):

1. Begin with your original Publisher document composed of facing pages of A4 sheets.
2. Select File > Print
3. In the print dialogue box, make sure that you've selected a sheet size that matches your spread dimensions (In my case an 11x17, in your case an A3).
4. Under Document Layout options, make sure that you set the Model option to either Book or Booklet.
5. If you have this option in the Windows print dialogue box, under the PDF pull-down menu, select "Save as PDF".

 

[GrahamMYC]

Thankyou. It looks incredibly simple, except I do not have what you call "The PDF pulldown menu" . Where do I get that?

[Mark Oehlschlager]

Good question. I'm not familiar with the Windows interface.

Perhaps through trial and error (or via Help files), you can discover a way to "print" directly to PDF.

Or, even better, perhaps one of our fellow members who uses a Windows machine can point you in the right direction.

Best of luck.

[GrahamMYC]

Mark

You have indicated that there is a door there somewhere. All I need is someone to show me where it is!

Thankyou

 

[Fixx]

Are you sure the OKI printer driver does not have booklet feature? You could just export your item as normal PDF pages and use PDF Reader to print if driver allows you to print the PDF as booklet.

[Sabine 108]

I'm happy to have found the instructions for printing a liltte booklet for myself in this thread.
Graham, where the heck is your 'save as PDF'-button? You don't need to select a printer, for me 'no printer selected' works fine.

[GrahamMYC]

Fixx

Thanks for the thought. .The owner of the printer has been producing print for local customers for some years but assembles his booklets manually(!!) I suspect he will be unwilling to play with the printer settings. In any case Publisher should be able to produce a pdf file  compiled for a booklet - and it seems it is possible on a mac, but not on Windows (unless someonecan show me how). Lets see if Serif respond

[GrahamMYC]

1 hour ago, Sabine 108 said:

I'm happy to have found the instructions for printing a liltte booklet for myself in this thread.
Graham, where the heck is your 'save as PDF'-button? You don't need to select a printer, for me 'no printer selected' works fine.

I wish I knew! Are you using a Mac? I am on Windows. 

[Sabine 108]

Well, yes. I'm on a Mac, where livin' is easy

[fde101]

If you are on Windows 10, look for a printer named "Microsoft Print to PDF" to be included in the list of printers you can select from.

If you don't have that, here is a Micro$oft page on how to add it:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/how-to-add-or-reinstall-the-microsoft-pdf-printer/70377c34-e50a-42be-b9f3-92345d6e25df

 

If you are on older versions of Windows you will need a third-party solution to add a PDF printer; there are a few around if you search for them.

[v_kyr]

There are a bunch of Windows PDF tools (freeware and commercial) which allow to reorder PDF documents in various ways here. - If you search on Google after that topic you will probably find a lot of them.

Here are just two of them ...

• PDFsam basic
• PdfBooklet (Python based, see the Win installer)

[GrahamMYC]

3 hours ago, fde101 said:

If you are on Windows 10, look for a printer named "Microsoft Print to PDF" to be included in the list of printers you can select from.

If you don't have that, here is a Micro$oft page on how to add it:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/how-to-add-or-reinstall-the-microsoft-pdf-printer/70377c34-e50a-42be-b9f3-92345d6e25df

 

If you are on older versions of Windows you will need a third-party solution to add a PDF printer; there are a few around if you search for them.

Hey thanks.I did not know such a thing existed. I have tried it and got the Argentine answer (i.e. 98% right, with a critical 2% missing). At present it is producing the right page pairs (I think), but my printer friend would prefer to have all the outers, then all the inners, if you know what I mean . I need to apply a couple of coats of thinking about it, but it is certainly far, far easier than trying to manually build the file. It avoids nearly all of the issues I have reported above.

So thankyou again!!!!!

[GrahamMYC]

3 hours ago, v_kyr said:

There are a bunch of Windows PDF tools (freeware and commercial) which allow to reorder PDF documents in various ways here. - If you search on Google after that topic you will probably find a lot of them.

Here are just two of them ...

• PDFsam basic
• PdfBooklet (Python based, see the Win installer)

Many thanks. I am going to try working via the microsoft print to pdf. But those tolls may comeinhandy. 

[Przemysław]

As a printer, I would advise to check with your printer. I bet it will be enough to send a file without imposition. They may advise you on margins, but it should be enough. :-)

Personally, I hate when customers impose documents themselves, because it's almost never correct, and for example, I need to correct gutter on one of my priners (the only more annoying thing is when they make 8mm bleed “just to be on the safe side” when I said it needs to be 2mm). :-)

[thomaso]

@GrahamMYC, if the printing computer has Adobe Acrobat installed then you simply can export in AFPub as single-page PDF and use Acrobat's ability to print as booklet. ( https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-booklets-acrobat-reader.html )

It is the same result as printing as a booklet in AFPub, just one pdf step in between – but less to carry to the printer.

 

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, Przemysław said:

(the only more annoying thing is when they make 8mm bleed “just to be on the safe side” when I said it needs to be 2mm). :-)

Thank-you for my morning chuckle.