Make a PDF Booklet
Turn a PDF into a folded booklet. The pages are reordered onto sheets so that once you print both sides, fold the stack in half and staple the spine, they read in the right order. Nothing is uploaded.
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The pages
Load a PDF to see its pages.
Cropping hides, it does not delete
The sheet of paper is left exactly as it was and only the area a reader displays changes, so the trimmed content is still in the file. That makes a mistake easy to undo, and makes cropping the wrong tool for hiding anything.
How to use this tool
Drop a PDF on the box at the top. Every sheet is drawn for you, front and back, with the page that lands in each half marked, before anything is built.
Print the result double sided, flipping on the short edge, fold the whole stack in half together, and staple through the fold.
Why the pages come out in that order
This is the part that looks wrong until you fold it, so it is worth explaining.
Take an eight page booklet. It prints on two sheets. The outer sheet carries pages eight and one on its front, and two and seven on its back. The inner sheet carries six and three, then four and five. Laid flat that looks like nonsense.
Fold them together and it resolves. The reader opens to page one, turns to two and three, then four and five in the middle, and works back out through six, seven and eight. Each sheet holds a page from the front of the document and its partner from the back, because once folded those two end up facing outward together.
Why the count reaches a multiple of four
One folded sheet gives four sides: two on the front, two on the back. There is no way to have half a sheet, so the total has to be a multiple of four.
A five page document therefore becomes eight, with three blanks. Those blanks are added at the back, where a reader expects to find them, rather than scattered through the booklet.
A worked check you can repeat
Take four pages. One sheet: front carries four and one, back carries two and three. Fold it and read it through, and you get one, two, three, four.
Take twelve pages. Three sheets, and folding them together still gives one through twelve in order.
The ordering was checked against an independent implementation before publishing: twenty five hand written cases covering the smallest booklet, padding on every remainder, right to left binding, and a single page document. Then every page count from one to six hundred, for both the left hand and the right hand binding.
The check that matters is not that the numbers look right on the sheet. It is that folding is simulated and the booklet read back through, confirming the reader gets the original order every time, with the blanks falling at the end and no page appearing twice. Six hundred page counts were checked that way for each binding, twelve hundred booklets in all, and none came out wrong.
Mistakes that catch people out
Flipping on the long edge. The backs come out upside down. It has to be short edge.
Folding each sheet separately. They fold together as one stack, then get stapled through the fold.
Printing on portrait paper. The sheets are landscape because two pages sit side by side. Set the printer to match.
Very long documents. Past about sixty four pages the fold gets too thick and the inner pages creep out. Split it into several booklets.
Assuming a password protected file will open. It will not. Remove the protection first, in software that has the password.
Common questions
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is opened by your browser, the booklet is built here on the page, and the download comes from your machine.
How do I print it?
Double sided, flipping on the short edge. Then fold the whole stack in half together and staple through the fold.
Why were blank pages added?
A folded booklet needs a page count that is a multiple of four. Anything short is padded at the back, so the blanks fall at the end where they belong.
Why is the sheet landscape?
Because two portrait pages sit side by side on it. An A4 landscape sheet folds down to an A5 booklet.
What is saddle stitching?
Folding the sheets together and stapling through the spine. It suits booklets up to roughly sixty four pages before the fold gets too thick.
Does the text stay searchable?
Yes. Pages are placed as page objects rather than turned into pictures, so text remains selectable and images keep their resolution.
Related PDF tools and reference
Reference: ISO 32000, the standard that defines how one page is embedded inside another.