Making books in Microsoft Word 2007

Book Making Instructions:
Microsoft Word 2007 in Vista.

Lot's of people would like to know how to make a book in Microsoft word. Well, it is not as hard as you may think; it is just a matter of getting the settings right.

First, we need to understand what a book is.

For this exercise, a book is:
A5 page size.
This is 4 pages per A4 piece of paper (double sided).
Yep, that is right, for every piece of printer paper sitting in your printer at home, you will get 4 pages of your book.

A book is made up of sections of folded A4 paper. To make it easy we will use sections of 12 pages, or 3 pieces of paper.
This means that our book is in multiples of 12 pages. Our book can have 12, 24, 36, 48, etc pages.

Second, we need to tell Microsoft word that this is what we are doing.

Open a new word document. Make sure you pick a blank document.
Go to Page Layout and click on size. Choose a page size of A5. The document size will shrink. Feel free to cut and paste your book into this document, or start writing now!
Next, you need to open up the page setup dialogue box. This is the little square beside the words page setup in Word 2007.
In the tab margins, Pages, multiple pages, you will see a drop down menu. Opening the drop down menu you will see bookfold. Select this. In sheets per booklet choose 12.
Next, choose the tab paper up the top of this page setup dialogue box. Make sure that the paper size is A4.

That's it for Microsoft Word. We have just told it that we are writing on A5 pages, are printing on A4 paper, and are making a book(let) with 12 pages per section.

Thirdly, just when you thought it was over!

We need to make sure we tell the printer what we are doing!
When you decide to print, you will have to click on properties beside the printer name.
You will see that the printer already knows that we are printing on A4 paper.
Good.
Most printers at home wont print both sides, so it is up to you to turn the paper over youself. To make life easy you want the printer to print all of one side of the paper, then you take the stack of paper from the tray and put it back into to printer to print the other side.
Go to the advanced settings of your printer. You will want to select manual duplex (or manual turn over depending on your printer). If you are lucky you will have an option that says, print both sides!

That's it, you are ready to print.
This is only half of your bookmaking journey. All you have done is printed the book onto paper. You will still have to fold the paper, bind (sew) the book together and then choose a cover.

Have fun with your book making. Don't forget to allow for a few test runs when printing. Nobody expects a book to print perfectly the first time. If you are not feeling confident then print a section at a time: choose pages 1 - 12 for example. Perhaps you should try and write a 12 page book to start things going.

Next time we will talk about sewing the book together, it is a very satisfying thing to see your book bound.

Okay writers, get writing now!

Leave comments if you would like me to show you more details.