Orphan Pages When Printing As Booklet SOLVED

[Jon_AK]

With a 10 page document printed both sides as a booklet, pages 9 & 10 are orphaned & wind up on a page of their own at the original half size. I was told that in order to effectively print a booklet, the document should be divisible by 4 otherwise, blank pages would be inserted to make up the difference.
Another thing that is unusual is the page sequencing. Shouldn't the sequence be pages 1 & 10, 2 & 9, 3 & 8, 4 & 7 etc.? The way the printed output is coming across is pages 1 & 4, 3 & 2, 5 & 8, 7 & 6, 9 then 10. Is this correct?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Jon_AK,

Welcome to our forums.

Please note that once you select "Booklet" in the first drop down menu - you will get a second one where you can select "Book". You can then also control the number of sheets per signature, and with Sheets in Signature set to 1 - you will get your desired page arrangements:

image.png

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Jon_AK]

Please note that once you select "Booklet" in the first drop down menu - you will get a second one where you can select "Book". You can then also control the number of sheets per signature, and with Sheets in Signature set to 1 - you will get your desired page arrangements:

Thanks Stefan, Yes, it has always been set as booklet / book. I had all settings the way you're indicating but with no success. I also tried mixing several other settings but could not get rid of the two orphan pages. What did fix the problem is going back to what I discovered earlier about having the document divisible by 4. Having 10 pages does not divide evenly by 4 so I wound up adding a blank page at the front & a blank page at the end. Although it wound up sending a blank page 1 & 12, the remainder of the file printed out as it should.
It doesn't have anything to do with PDF X-Change, it's just the way of printing booklet/book format. I'm quite certain that it's the same with Adobe & any other PDF editor.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

[PHK]

I am wondering if inserting some blank pages would help.

In other words, if you have 10 pages but are faced with the prospect of 12 being necessary for the "book", why not insert 2 blank pages where you want them to fill out the requisite 12? In that way, at least the user has some control over how the book looks.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, PHK

I think that is precisely what jon_AK said that they did in their previous post, and it worked for them.

What did fix the problem is going back to what I discovered earlier about having the document divisible by 4. Having 10 pages does not divide evenly by 4 so I wound up adding a blank page at the front & a blank page at the end. Although it wound up sending a blank page 1 & 12, the remainder of the file printed out as it should.

I dont think this is an issue so much as a misuse of the function however.
The Sheets in signature function here is really the main focus. Book binding operates on the assumption that you will be placing a number of pages in a group, and folding at the middle, and then flipping the pages in that order.
For example, with a 10 page document and 3 "sheets in signature" the printout would be like so:
Front ----- Sheet 1------ Back
Blank, pg 1---------------- pg 2, blank
Front ----- Sheet 2------ Back
10, 3 ------------------------ 4, 9
Front ----- Sheet 3------ Back
8, 5 ------------------------- 6, 7

Placing these sheets in a stack before folding them allows you to get the pages in order ( slash indicates two pages are back to back on the same sheet)
1/2 (other half holds blank/blank)
3/4 (other half holds 9/10)
5/6 (other half holds 7/8)
7/8 (other half holds 5/6)
9/10 (other half holds 3/4)
blank/blank (other half holds 1/2)

If you have reduced the "sheets in signature" to a lower value, such as "2" that would cause the orphaned page 9/10, Blank/blank, you describe initially, because the application is expecting that you take sheest 1/1 and fold them together, and then append sheet 3 afterwards. I am not entirely sure that there is a need to add additional blank pages in manually in this case, as the calculation seems to be correct.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

@Daniel: I was not assuming that the blank pages were to be first and last but could be anywhere in the book.

[Jon_AK]

For example, with a 10 page document and 3 "sheets in signature" the printout would be like so:
Front ----- Sheet 1------ Back
Blank, pg 1---------------- pg 2, blank
Front ----- Sheet 2------ Back
10, 3 ------------------------ 4, 9
Front ----- Sheet 3------ Back
8, 5 ------------------------- 6, 7

Daniel, the whole issue is to not have any blank / half blank sheets. The book output is for patterns that customers purchase. There is a title page & then the remaining 9 pages are the pattern. The original 10 page document, no matter how the signature setting was set always left a half page blank for page 9 & 10. Doesn't look good for paying customers. By adding a empty page at the beginning & at the end, on the screen it worked out great but we are still strugglling with the actual printed copy. I do not know if it is the printer / driver (Epson 5850) or something that is not formulating correctly in the transfer of control information between the Windows 11 computer(s) & the printer. I have verified on more than one machine the same output.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, Jon_AK

Are your printers those offer automatic duplexing, or are you manually flipping the pages? If you need to manually flip that could explain the difficulty.

Booklet format does generally assume that you have a page count at a multiple of 4 to ensure no blanks are present, but it certainly does not require it, as the extra blanks will just be left at the end of the document.

In effect, when you get the duplexed printout, you just need to (starting with the group that has page 1 in it) count out the number of pages from your "sheets in signature" setting, and then fold those pages as groups/bundles. Do the same with each following group of (for example, 3) and, if you had a book with 48 "pages" in it, you would have 4 bundles of 3 sheets, each folded in half once, which would be placed side by side to give you the desired page order.

Kind regards,

[Jon_AK]

Are your printers those offer automatic duplexing, or are you manually flipping the pages? If you need to manually flip that could explain the difficulty.

Dan, the printer can be selected to turn on or off duplexing & it is selected as duplex. At the moment, the pattern pages had to be increased to an even 12 due to additional information needing to be provided so with that, all is good & not having to use blank pages.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Jon_AK,

Happy to hear that the problem got a solution with those two extra pages.
And for the initial issue - I believe that yes - you would need a multiple of 4 total pages in your file - as you are placing 4 pages per sheet with that set up - so if you have less - you will end up with an unexpected configuration for the last two pages.

Kind regards,
Stefan