Print Blank Pages Messes Up Print Booklet
David wrote:
I’m trying to print a small booklet with the print booklet feature in InDesign CS3 and it keeps giving me the message that it has added 2 blank pages to create the booklet.
In the past several years of posts, the Number 1 most-commented post has been Steve Werner’s article about using Print Booklet in CS3. Clearly a lot of people have had problems with this feature! The problem is that when a blog post has 120 comments, a lot of people don’t want to read them all (I don’t blame them!) even if there are some nuggets of gold in them thar hills. For example, I believe the answer to David’s question above is hiding in there.
Whenever I hear that Print Booklet is adding pages, I figure the answer is probably one of two things:
- The total page count isn’t divisible by four. For example, a 14-page document set up to print Saddle Stitched (in the Print Booklet dialog box), will get two extra pages added to it, for a total of 16. This makes sense because each sheet of paper (when printed double-sided and folded) includes four pages, two on front and two on back.
- The less obvious problem is that of blank pages. InDesign won’t print blank pages by default, and therefore Print Booklet doesn’t see them. So if you have a 16-page document with 2 blank pages, then Print Booklet warns you that it will add two blank pages at the end — probably not what you want.
If you do have one or more blank pages in your document, and you want them to print like that, you need to take emergency action: Click the Print Settings button at the bottom of the Print Booklet dialog box. That opens the Print dialog box.
Now turn on the Print Blank Pages checkbox and click OK. InDesign stops deleting pages from the middle and subsequently adding them to the end, and you’re good to go.
I hope they bring back the functionality of CS2’s inbooklet to CS4. I loved being able to make a new document. And yes, I have tried the free create booklet script, but it isn’t the same.
BINGO!
That did the trick. The only issue I have now is that InDesign still tells me - via the pages dialog box — that I have 16 pages in 9 spreads when it should be 8 spreads. Right? I’m not going nuts here am I?
BTW…I’ll be mining these comments for purtty little nuggets like this in the future.
No, you’re not going nuts, David. Good point: The Pages panel isn’t thinking in terms of printer spreads. So page 1 is all by itself on a “spread.” So is page 16. All together: 9 spreads for 16 pages.
i agree, fritz. d@mn quark for buying out alap and killing adobe’s link to the original booklet plugin. wish adobe had made that move instead.
quark’s the one that bought them out?
sounds like the last ditch effort of a dying software.
FWIW, InBooklet wasn’t without its problems. While it did a decent job of printing booklets, it was less-than-stellar in creating new documents.
Any items that crossed the spine couldn’t be handled and, if I remember correctly, number lists tended to get messed up.
In short, it wasn’t that great a loss except for very simple documents.
no, wasn’t without its problems, but i liked it better than what we have now.
I CANNOT figure out how to print a postcard two-up……………….GRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Help!
Sorry……that’s in InDesign
Hallelujah! I love you. I spent an hour trying ot figure out how to get rid of the balnk pages it kept adding. you are awesome.
Thanks for your tips on printing the blank pages, was driving me nuts…however when I save as a PDF and print preview in ‘print booklet’ mode I’m back to sqaure 1!!! All of sudden the pages don’t match up how they’re supposed to once again. It’s as if now acrobat doesn’t recognise those blank pages despite putting a transparent rectangle in them. ARRRGHHH!!!
So what if you have a document that isn’t divisible bt four (mine is 10 pages) and you did check the “print blank pages” dialog box?