Free tools to quickly and easily create booklets

I’m getting married next week, and I’m putting together an order of service. I’ve created it in Pages (I haven’t installed Word on my new MacBook Pro) and I have the order in 6 A4 pages, laid out in portrait. However, I want to print it as a booklet (where the pages are printed on landscape, and folded in half). Perhaps you’ve had the same need with other printed materials – I know I have in the past! If you use Microsoft Word, this is a relatively painless process. I couldn’t work out how to do this without Word. Until tonight.

Thanks to Check 1-2, I discovered CreateBooklet. It adds an option to ‘Create booklet’ when you print a file on your Mac. It’s a little tricky to explain, so I’ll leave that to the guys at Check 1-2. Thankfully, the developer has also released an update for Snow Leopard. And, it’s free. I’ve got a lot of respect and thanks for people who develop free, quality apps. Thanks Christoph.

If you’re not using a Mac, an online application that does the same thing is Booklet Creator. Here are some instructions about how to use BookletCreator, including explaining how A4 PDFs are turned into A5 booklets.

My guess is, most people are still using Microsoft Office. However, if you’re not using Word, or you have a PDF that you want to turn into a booklet, you might find these tools to be quite useful.