Posted on 01/13/2011 1:21:26 PM PST by Pharmboy
I just started a small business and I put out a monthly newsletter. The first 4-pager (last month) I wrote in Word, converted to pdf and took the pen drive to Kinko's. They printed out 100 on glossy paper and it looked great (the bulk go out by email to my list, but I need about one hundred hard copy anyway).
Now this would be fine, except Kinko's charged me 455 bucks for the 100 copies. They printed it on 11 x 17 paper and folded it (so pages 4 and 1 were on one side, and 2 and 3 were on the other).
So, I researched the cheapest printer that could print 11x17 paper (I wound up with the HP 7500 which is fine), got the glossy 11x17 paper online, and tried to print with the Adobe or the MS Word 2007 programs. Couldn't do it.
I went to staples and asked for the program that would merely allow me to place the pages side by side and print on 11x17 paper, 2 pages per side. They sold me a Nuance PDF Converter program, but that did not work.
I brought it back and the guy said "Oh...you need Publisher." So I bought it...but when it converts it to its own file, things get jumbled.
But, your customers don't have email?
After you do File ==> Print, hit the printer’s “Propertys” button and look for some sort of a “Pamphlet” option.
That may provide a means to do it.
I suspect Adobe InDesign could handle your needs. Pricey but excellent software.
Kinkos ripped you off.
Convert everything to publisher and to 8.5 x 11.
You might try saving the two-page layout as an 11x17 image and then print the image.
I have done this with word for a church bulletin a couple years back, check your advanced printer settings. Pamphlet settings is what your looking for if I remember.
In Word 2007, did you try going to Page Layout and setting it to Landscape and Paper Size 11X17?
Then set it up in Columns.
I personally do Football Programs for my kids’ PeeWee team in Powerpoint as 11X17 Landscape. And it works like a charm.
Let me know why the above didn’t work for you. You ought to be able to copy paste your first one into the new document after you set it up as above. It should come out fine.
When you say you “couldn’t do it,” what do you mean? Couldn’t figure out how to impose the pages for 1-4 and 2-3 or what?
Do you have an image editing program? You can set up an 11 x 17 base file and open each PDF, placing in the page order you want side by side, for a low tech method.
If you plan on doing this regularly, you need a reasonably capable page layout program, and Publisher ain’t it, lol. Adobe InDesign is excellent, part of Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4), also contains full featured PhotoShop. Fairly expensive, but if you’re doing this every month, it’ll be worth it in printing costs and frustration avoided.
Do you have Windows Picture & Fax viewer?
Don’t buy anything until you check out these open source and FREE programs:
http://www.osalt.com/indesign
I used to write, publish and print a monthly newsletter on Publisher. Works great, just make sure you set it up to print “booklet” style.
You are probably going to no longer use Word, but if you do use it in the future, you need to use text boxes to hold images and captions. If you simply paste images directly into the document, they get terribly jumbled when reformatting.
“Imposition” is the word you’re looking for. You would do best to re-do it in Publisher or other such program. Word isn’t made for such things. However, I have used PDF imposers and they worked just fine.
At your cheapest, first check to see if you can print to PDF. If not, Google up PDFCreator, download and install it. That installs a PDFCreator printer you can print to, which results in saved PDF files. Then you print your four pages to PDF, create a blank landscape 11x17 Word document, drop your PDF files onto it in the right places, and print.
I’ve been trying to solve the same problem for the past two years. No success to this point . . .
You’ve got to love Freepers- not only can you get a question answered here on just about any subject, but it almost always turns out that someone else is in need of the same information, and just hadn’t realized they could ask!
Excellent advice. I’ve done this myself, and you can do it with just word, but you have to know how to do columns and split the page.
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