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For Booklet Printing - Publisher is the best choice in Office

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In a recent article on Woody’s Office Watch, a staff writer opined that for printing a booklet in Office, “ the ideal is to start with a standard Word document … ”. This is helpful advice if you have only Word on your computer. Most people, however, also have Microsoft Office Publisher on their computer. Since Publisher’s fundamental purpose is to act as a page layout application, it is specifically designed to do all kinds of printing, including booklets.

In this post, the Publisher Test team’s print area owner, Rush Velcsov, takes you step by step through printing a top-fold booklet like a calendar and provides links to even more information about booklet printing in Publisher.

 

In today’s blog post I would like to talk about top fold booklet printing in Publisher 2007.

 

We make the following assumptions:

a. The plan is to print a monthly calendar on multiple 11x17 size sheets of paper.

b. The calendar is top-folded and each month is displayed on half of the sheet.

c. The application is Publisher 2007.

d. Every time I use the word sheet I am referring to the physical sheet of paper that will come out of the printer. Every time the word page is used I am referring to the Publisher page. Page and sheet can be identical or different.

 

Here are easy steps to create this book-fold item:

1. Install a printer that supports 11x17 size sheets of paper. If you do not have a physical printer you can install the Generic Color PS for Commercial Printing printer driver. More information is available here: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HP101170121033.aspx?pid=CH101736131033

2. Launch Publisher 2007

3. Select Calendars and pick a wizard i.e. Bars.

4. On the right side pane press the “Set Calendar Dates…” and choose the date range. I.e. January 2009 - December 2009. | OK

5. Make sure the Page size = Landscape in the right side pane.

6. Press the Create button on the lower end of the right pane. At this moment you should have a 12 page publication in landscape mode.

7. View | Two-page Spread. This is very important. It will enable the “Booklet, top-fold” option on step 8d.

8. File | Print and:

a. Select the printer that supports 11x17. In our case the Generic Color PS for Commercial Printing printer driver

b. Paper size = Tabloid 11x17

c. Orientation = Portrait

d. All the above settings were necessary to enable the “Booklet, top-fold” option under the Printing options. Please select it.

e. If you want to print it both sides select “2-sided printing options” = “Two-sided, flip short side”

Figure 1

Fig. 1. The Publisher 2007 print dialog ready to print Booklet, top-fold

 

9. Let’s assume for the moment that the selected printer supports 11x17 sheet sizes and has the capability to print on both sides of the sheet. Just press Print and the top fold booklet calendar will be ready in a few moments.

 

 

A large number of printers do not support duplexing (printing on both sides of the sheet). To verify if your printer has duplexing capability use the Printer Details tab in the Print dialog.

Figure 2

Fig. 2. The Publisher 2007 print dialog reading printer driver settings. No duplexing capabilities for this printer driver.

 

 

Publisher 2007 has a tool called Printer Setup Wizard that helps the user print on both sides of the sheet using printer that does not support duplexing. There are 3 entry points for the Printer Setup Wizard:

- In the print dialog select “Show how to insert paper” under the preview window. If the wizard was not run for the current printer click on the “Run the Two-Sided Printing Setup Wizard” and the wizard will start. Once the wizard is set up this preview window will display the feeding direction of the sheet.

- From the print dialog | Advanced Printer Setup and select the last tab “Printer Setup Wizard”. Press the "Two-Sided Printing Setup Wizard…” button and follow the instructions. -

- On pressing the print button. If the printer does not support duplex and the user selected Two-Sided the user is asked to run the Printer Setup Wizard.

Figure 3

Fig. 3. One of the entry points for the Publisher 2007 Printer Setup Wizard.

With the Printer Setup Wizard successfully completed the user can print on both sides of the publication. After the print button was pressed the first side of the publication is printed. The print job stops and a dialog like this is displayed. Looking at the image and following the instructions on how to feed the paper back to the printer will help the user complete the Two-sided print job.

 

 

Figure 4

Fig. 4. The Publisher 2007 Printer Setup Wizard displays this dialog for the second side of the paper.

 

For more ideas on printing booklets from Publisher, the following links may be helpful:

For Publisher 2003 feel free to use the article from here -

https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HP051145841033.aspx

 

On the publisher discussion group there are several topics addressing different booklet print issues. Feel free to visit the discussion group - https://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.publisher&lang=en&cr=US

 

 

About the contributor: Rush Velcsov is a Software Design Engineer in Test II in the Publisher team, owner of the print feature for several years. In his free time he likes to ski, hike and read good books.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2009
    Can't MSFT just drop publisher and integrate its functionabilities into Word ? That would make life so much easier.

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2009
    Thanks so much! I had almost given up on trying to print this.  I love Publisher and I use it daily.  Keep up the good work!!