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Around ance a week, I need to bulk print a couple of documents with my desk jet printer (it doesn't support automated both sides printing). I like the Booklet printing feature in Adobe Reader, and I normally use it. Since the printer doesn't support automated both sides printing, what I normally do is print all of the document using Booklet printing features, first using "Front pages only", and then reverse the paper and print everything again using "Back pages only"

This is the setting I am talking about

Is it possible to automate this task, for example using a batch file, so that I don't have to manually open, and select printing options for each document using Adobe Reader? Being able to do this will save really a lot of time for me!

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3 Answers 3

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You could automate the printing in three steps, using a .bat file.

  1. Use the free PDFtk toolkit to create two new PDF files, one containing the odd pages and the other the even ones.
    The parameters to use are cat even and cat odd.

  2. Use the pause command to wait while you turn the paper around

  3. Print using your preferred PDF processor.
    As Acrobat /p parameter just goes directly to the Print dialog, you could use instead the free Foxit Reader, using its '/p' command-line parameter to print to the printer.

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  • Do you know how to make "booklet"s in PDFtk toolkit?
    – Louis Rhys
    Mar 16, 2013 at 16:43
  • @LouisRhys: You should post this as a separate question.
    – harrymc
    Feb 12, 2014 at 18:08
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Approach one: Easy but not without hazzles

You might want to use "AutoIt". Create a file list, iterate over it and open Acrobat Instances on every file. Use Mouse and Keyboard Commands to access the printer menu (or use /p while opening) and set up the things you want. Quite easy and straight forward, but you should not try to use your mouse and keyboard during this. You cannot even lock your screen.

Approach two: Nice but much more work to do

You can use DDE for this job. Some VBS allows you to send commands to Acrobat. There is a quite nice (yet aged) documentation on this. But as far as I can see only the DDE-Server-Name changed to acroviewA10 (for Acrobat) and acroviewR10 (for Reader). This is my prefered way of Acrobat automation.

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Since the printer doesn't support automated both sides printing

Are you sure? I have a really old black and white laser printer from HP, and it does support printing on both sides, but not "automatically" as you say -- you have to grab all the papers, put them in the feeding slot (face down) and press a popup button, which will make the printer continue printing on those pages.

Try going to "devices and printers", right click your printer and select "Printer properties" (not "Properties" at the bottom!). This should give you the custom setup granted by the printer driver, and from here you might be able to set the default to double sided printing (as makeshift as it may be, but it probably exists). If you only print booklets (or mostly), you could probably set that as a default as well.

If you don't get a menu that gives you this kind of options, try updating your printer driver on the manufacturers website to the newest one available. If your driver comes from Windows automatically, you probably don't have all the bells and whistles available.

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