A typesetting question in Microsoft 'Word'.

Factual Questions
1

A serious work-based question that justifies me keeping an SDMB browser window open while at work. I’m also fairly sure there are some serious power users on this board…

One of my tasks at my day job (at a large United Church congregation in north Toronto) is editing and printing the weekly order of service.

The order of service varies from week to week - the shortest ones are 4 pages, printed on 8 1/2 x 14 paper in landscape and folded in the middle. 4, 8, and 12 page versions are straight-forward; 6 and 10 page versions involve printing half as many middle sheets and cutting them.

I currently collect all the information required from the presiding minister and the music director, place it in the correct order on an 8 1/2 x 7 template, and then copy/paste it into the appropriate template, depending on how many pages the 8 1/2 x 7 tells me I need.

The templates are 8 1/2 x 14, landscape, in two columns. Because they will be printed double-sided, those pages need to be in ‘printer’ order. For instance, an eight page order of service has to have page 8 and page 1 on the first page, page 2 and page 7 on the second page, page 6 and page 3 on the third page, and page 4 and page 5 on the fourth page.

This leads to my question - any editing done on the (say) 8 page template means that anything added to page 3 makes it flow on to page 6, which then has to be cut and pasted to page 4. It can make for a frustrating hour or two as things get added at the last minute.

Is there a setting somewhere in Word that could take that 8 1/2 x 7 template, and automatically sort its pages into the correct order for printing? It would certainly make my life easier if there were. If buying a second program to do the typesetting is the only answer, I’m afraid I’m stuck - there’s no money in the budget for such a thing.

Any advice gratefully accepted…

2

The following is for Word 2016:

Go to File>Print>Page Setup (at the bottom of the settings section) then:

on the Margins tab find the Multiple Pages drop down under the pages section click on that and select book fold.

Then when you print it will create double sided pages with two “columns” per page with everything in the correct order.

You can print as PDF to test if this setting does what you need.

Hope this helps.

3

Ah, you’re brilliant!!! You’ve just saved me at least two hours of painful brain sweat per week!! Thank you very much!!

4

BTW, the term for this is “imposition.”

5

There are also tools that, given any PDF, will slice & dice it for you to make this happen. (Since you’re using Word, you might as well use the functions within it, but if you’re ever stuck with a pre-made PDF that needs its pages re-ordered for the printer, all is not lost.)

6

Happy to help :slight_smile:

7

[Moderating]

It looks to be answered now anyway, but as this question was technical rather than artistic, it belongs in GQ, not CS. Moving.

8

My wife does something similar for her church. We have found Word flaky at best when formatting booklets, so we found the best solution was to type up an original on standard (A4) portrait paged in Word and then save the document as a PDF. Printing multiple pages, double-sided, in booklet form seems to be quite simple from a PDF.