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ompopo
ompopo
Participant
December 10, 2010
Answered

How to split a PDF with spread pages to single pages?

  • December 10, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 202300 views

Hi

We just recieved a small booklet from a customer wich containted spread pages (sorry if it's the wrong term, I mean that to and to pages like 2 and 3 were merged to one page in the PDF).  Our printer doesn't accept spread pages so what we had to do were to make a 40 page document in InDesign with facing pages, then place the pages from the top left corner of the even pages so it "stretched" across to the next pages.  Then we could just export it ourselves and get the pages as single pages.

My question is: is there a way to make this quick and easy in Acrobat (or InDesign if not possible in Acrobat)? Either with a clever solution or maybe a script?:..

We were lucky considering the booklet only contained 40 pages, but what if someone sent us a file with 400 pages, it would take quite a lot of time. I read somewhere that you could duplicate every page and then crop by hand, but that wouldn't be either precise nor time effective.

Thanks in advance for any help

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Dave Merchant

    As you only need the PDF for printing, you can refry it in Acrobat (not something we usually advise but in this case...)

    Open the Acrobat print dialog and select the Adobe PDF printer. Click Properties and make sure you're using a high quality print setting and the correct destination paper size (such as portrait A4 if your original has A3 spreads).

    Under Page Handling, choose "Tile all pages", 100% scale and zero overlap. Untick marks and labels, and print the file to a new PDF. You'll lose any layers, forms, scripts etc but you lost them anyway with your inDesign workaround. Be careful to check that fonts are embedded in the final document if you're printing via a commercial RIP.

    Note that if the PDF is secured to prevent editing / page extraction, the Tile choices on the print dialog Page Handling list won't be available even if the PDF has print permissions - Acrobat needs to play about with the page content to do the "tiled" layouts as some page objects will cross the cut line, so it needs an unsecured file to work on.

    1 reply

    D
    Dave MerchantCorrect answer
    Legend
    December 10, 2010

    As you only need the PDF for printing, you can refry it in Acrobat (not something we usually advise but in this case...)

    Open the Acrobat print dialog and select the Adobe PDF printer. Click Properties and make sure you're using a high quality print setting and the correct destination paper size (such as portrait A4 if your original has A3 spreads).

    Under Page Handling, choose "Tile all pages", 100% scale and zero overlap. Untick marks and labels, and print the file to a new PDF. You'll lose any layers, forms, scripts etc but you lost them anyway with your inDesign workaround. Be careful to check that fonts are embedded in the final document if you're printing via a commercial RIP.

    Note that if the PDF is secured to prevent editing / page extraction, the Tile choices on the print dialog Page Handling list won't be available even if the PDF has print permissions - Acrobat needs to play about with the page content to do the "tiled" layouts as some page objects will cross the cut line, so it needs an unsecured file to work on.

      R
      ronald15A7
      Participant
      August 8, 2023

      In Acrobat 2017 Pro, the Page Handling section is now Page Sizing & Handling, and there seems to be no option to "Tile all pages" in any section or nested dialog.  How can I achieve the outcome you described with Acrobat 2017 Pro?

        autoexec-bat
        autoexec-bat
        Participant
        February 12, 2024

        The "POSTER" tab is tile tab now.

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