Print Pages Per Sheet To Save Paper

You can use the Pages Per Sheet setting in the Print dialog box of almost any app to combine 2, 4 or more pages to one sheet of paper. This makes the print smaller, but can be useful if you are trying to save paper or only print a backup copy of some information.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Here's a useful tip if you need to print something out and it's got a lot of pages in it. Obviously, the best way to print it out is one page per page. Maybe it's a long webpage, maybe it's a long PDF like this. But say you want to conserve paper. You want to conserve ink. There is an interesting option.
So if you go to File and Print you can see here this is going to be 89 pages. Now maybe this is something I just want to print out for reference. Maybe it's a bunch of trip reservation information and you want to have, kind of, a backup copy of it to carry in your luggage. You know you don't need it to be printed full size. 
Well, click on Show Details if you don't already have that clicked so you can see all of the other options here. You can go to Layout and under Layout you can choose Pages Per Sheet. So you can choose one is the standard. But if I can do two you can see in the preview here it's printing side by side. Now there's only 45 pages to print. You can flip through them and you can see it's printing side by side.
For most documents this is fine. I've just halved the number of pages I need to print. I can still read everything and it's great.
I can even go further than that and do four. You can see how it's printing them now. Now I'm only printing 23 pages. So imagine if you have a set of instructions that you want to have a backup printout for. For travel or whatever to file away. You don't really mind that it's really small print. You can certainly save a lot of storage space, a lot of paper, a lot of ink by doing this.
Sometimes these are called Up. One up, two up, four up. It's an old printing term. You can even go to sixteen for something very small. Again maybe at this size you might not want to read it but if you have a good printer, like I've got a decent laser printer, I could probably read this if say this was reference information. Maybe I wanted a printout. Something to store away in a safe deposit box for instance. It would be easier to print six pages instead of 89 pages.
So there's a lot you can do using this special Pages per Sheet. It's pretty much available not matter what your print options are. Try this out the next time you need to print something. I very often use the 2 setting for printing things. The 4 setting when I just need to take backup data with me on a trip or something like that as a printout just as a backup for my digital copies of those documents.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Print Pages Per Sheet To Save Paper”

Marcia Byerly

7 years ago

Thanks again for a great tip I didn't know existed. I will definitely use this!

Lomauro Paul

It's unbelievable that I've been using Epson printers at home for over a decade and had no idea that I could print X many pages per sheet. Many, many thanks for the informative video. It was so easy to follow your directions.

Geoff Matson

Thanks for keeping me informed. What a great tip. I will be using this often and saving some money on printing.

Linda Lessard DesGroseilliers

Excellent tip, Gary. I routinely change the page range setting at the top to print just the single page that I want, but this could be very handy for tutorials, etc. that I want to keep. Thanks!

David Mackay

Thanks Gary - very useful - one thing that I tend to use to save paper is duplex printing - any idea how to get Safari to print on both sides of the paper?

Thanks

David

Gary Rosenzweig

David: That's a function of your printer and the printer drivers. If your printer supports it, and you have the proper software from the manufacturer installed, it should be an option when you go to print. But it may look different for different printers.

Joy

Is it possible to print several photos to one a4 sheet rather than printing a smaller photo repeatedly on separate sheets?

Joy: You have tons of options in the Photos app, if that is what you mean. See https://macmost.com/printing-photos-from-iphoto.html

Joy Richards

Many thanks...much appreciated Gary... been checking it all out!

Comments Closed.

Print Pages Per Sheet To Save Paper

Comments: 9 Responses to “Print Pages Per Sheet To Save Paper”

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