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Greetings Superusers,

I'm putting together a lengthy document in Word, and it's going to be printed and bound duplex.

I've put page-numbers "outside" etc, and all is pretty.

The problem is, in the "Two Pages" view, it puts p1 on the left, then p2 on the right, then p3 below on the left, and p4 on the right.

p1   p2
p3   p4
p5   p6

Shouldn't this be slightly different though? When I get to print it, p1 is on the right, not the left, so the preview should go

     p1
p2   p3
p4   p5
p6

Because when I "open" the book, it's pages 2 and 3 that are side-by-side.

This makes layout tweaking confusing, because it's not instantly obvious which pages will be "visible" to the reader at the same time together. Have I missed something?

I can't just put a blank page first, because that would bugger up the printing, as the printer automatically duplexes and binds etc.

(Office 2008, by the way)

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75% accept rate
Is this in Print Preview? – ChrisF Sep 25 '09 at 13:36
1  
No, just "View" -> "Print Layout" on the Ribbon. Although it's clearly not "Print Layout", it's just "Page Layout". – Cylindric Sep 25 '09 at 14:14
Print preview in two-page mode does adhere to left/right-ness of the pages. So maybe you should just use that? – Joey Sep 25 '09 at 14:38
Well, that would quite seriously limit my ability to make changes though, wouldn't it? I'll just have to accept that when working on a document you can't have WYSIWYG in Word unless you put in fake pages, and remember to take them out again before printing. – Cylindric Sep 28 '09 at 9:42
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6 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

The problem here is that the "two page view" you're using is just a two-page zoom, not a final print layout.

I would recommend putting the blank page in for your reviewing, and then take it out just before print time.

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That's what I was afraid of :( – Cylindric Sep 25 '09 at 13:54
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up vote 3 down vote

Two pages are just for preview. Just be sure that you select "Book fold" in Page setup dialog under "Multiple pages" since that will produce desired effect once book is printed.

If you really need "real" page view in two page view, only solution that I am aware of is to insert blank page on start.

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I don't let Word anywhere near my actual book/leaflet/binding options. I let my printer do all that - it's far cleverer and can staple etc. Word just confuses the poor thing. – Cylindric Sep 25 '09 at 14:15
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up vote 1 down vote

Apparently,

...if you have enabled either "Mirror margins" or "Different odd and even" headers/footers, Print Preview (but no other view) will show facing pages.

(source).

So, it doesn't work in "normal" two page view. Rather annoying indeed...

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up vote 0 down vote

a bit off topic but this article about Printing "N-Up" from Windows might be of interest to you.

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Thanks, but for printing to PDFs I just use the free and awesome PDFCreator from Sourceforge. Installs as a printer and skips all that "printing to file" and Ghostcript installation etc. – Cylindric Sep 28 '09 at 9:45
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up vote 0 down vote

A couple of suggestions:

  • To make sure your document is breaking in the places you want, always make sure your new section begins on an odd page. You can easily see this in two-page view in Word. If it's breaking on an even page, enter a manual page break (Ctrl Enter) on the page before.

  • If you want to see true double-sided, save the document in PDF format. In Adobe Acrobat ver. 8, choose View > Page Display > Two-Up. You will see your page 1 by itself, followed by page 2 on the left and 3 on the right.

I do agree with you: such a basic function should be part of Word. But that's Microsoft...

Steven

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You can insure that a section always begins on an odd page by inserting an "Odd Page" section break from the Insert menu. Word will automatically insert a blank page if necessary to make this happen. – mkClark Dec 7 '09 at 20:45
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up vote 0 down vote

Excellent question. I have the same problem. Here's a workaround.

  1. Insert a dummy page at the front. End the page with a section break.

  2. Renumber the pages in the document, starting with page 1 for the first real page of your document.

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This is the same as the accepted answer. – ChrisF Apr 12 '10 at 14:57
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