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anomander29298064sl56
Participant
March 1, 2026
Question

InDesign Booklet Printing Front and Back Pages Different Sizes When Scaling (85%) on Home Printer

  • March 1, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 85 views

I’m trying to print a project as a booklet on InDesign. I’ve printed a few before that were successful (after some troubleshooting), but I’m currently having an issue I haven’t run into before:

 

When I test print the first four pages of my file to make sure the front and back are aligned, the front of what’s printed on the page is about 1/8” longer than the back. The front spread is 10” long and the back spread is 10 1/8” long. 

 

In the InDesign file, the spreads are 12x9.5 inches, but I’m printing at 85% scale, so maybe that’s the issue? However, 100% scale is too big for my printer (I created the file before I realized I would be printing at home). I’ve also printed previous projects at different scales and it went fine, so not sure why it would stop working now.

 

The creep is set to 0 inches.

 

Any idea what could be causing this?

 

P.S. I’d rather not print from Acrobat. I was having major margin issues and could not get the pages to line up for the life of me (and yes, I adjusted the print position on my printer--that was not the issue). Since I’ve printed booklets successfully from InDesign before, I’d like to try to make it work again. If that’s the only option, though, I understand……...

    2 replies

    Peter Spier
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 12, 2026

    Any chance some of your pages have an included bleed and others do not?

    Harshika Verma
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    March 2, 2026

    Hi anomander29298064sl56,

    Thank you for reaching out, and sorry to hear you’re having trouble printing the booklet in InDesign. As you mentioned, you recently started experiencing the issue; earlier, it was working fine. Would you mind telling us the version of InDesign installed on your machine and the details of your operating system?

     

    Please also share the screenshot of your print settings for investigation purposes.
    Does that happen with a single file or all files?

     

    We will try our best to help.

     

    Thanks,

    Harshika

    anomander29298064sl56
    Participant
    May 9, 2026

    Hi, Harshika. Thank you for the reply and apologies for the late response.

    • I’m using InDesign 21.3
    • My OS is Tahoe 26.4.1
    • This issue is happening with all files
    • I’ve attached a screenshot of my print settings on a project that I was previously able to print double-sided as a booklet. I’ve also attached the print summary

    Please let me know if you need anything else from me.

    Abhishek Rao
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    May 12, 2026

    Hi ​@anomander29298064sl56,

     

    Sorry to hear that you’re still experiencing this issue. Could you please try disabling “Print as Bitmap” under Print Settings > Advanced and then test the booklet printing again?

    Also, instead of scaling inside InDesign Print Booklet, please try exporting the booklet at 100% scale and then control the scaling either only in the printer driver or only in Acrobat, but not both simultaneously.

    Additionally, sharing a couple of similar community threads for reference as well:

    https://community.adobe.com/questions-671/print-booklet-doesn-t-align-front-and-back-sides-of-pages-863452?postid=863452#post863452

    https://community.adobe.com/questions-671/how-to-fix-misalignment-issues-in-duplex-printing-892005?postid=892005#post892005

     

    Please let us know how it goes after trying these steps.

    Abhishek