Pages per Sheet

How to use Pages per Sheet

Key features of Pages per Sheet

About Pages per Sheet

Pages per Sheet, also called N-up, places several pages of a PDF side by side on each page of a new document, the way a printer's pages per sheet setting does, but as a file you can keep, send or print anywhere. The grid follows the count: 2 pages sit side by side on a landscape sheet or one above the other on a portrait one, 4 and 9 make square grids, 6 and 8 make grids of 3 by 2 and 4 by 2, and 16 makes a grid of 4 by 4.

Each page keeps its proportions and is drawn as vector content, so text stays sharp and can still be selected; nothing is turned into an image. Pages of different sizes share one grid and are centred in their cells. Only what is drawn on a page is copied: links, form fields and comments are separate objects on top of a page and do not come along. The card and the result say so when a file has any, and Flatten PDF turns fields and comments into page content first. There is no booklet imposition: pages are placed in reading order, not reordered for folding.

When to use Pages per Sheet

You want to print lecture slides as handouts. Six or eight slides per sheet keeps them readable and turns a 60-slide deck into 10 or 8 pages. Automatic orientation puts landscape slides on portrait sheets at those counts, in two columns.

A reviewer asked for a draft on paper. Two pages per sheet halves the page count while the text stays large enough to read, and with double-sided printing a 40-page report fits on 10 sheets of paper.

You need an overview of a long document. Sixteen pages per sheet shows the layout of a whole chapter at a glance, which helps when you check that headings, pictures and page breaks fall where they should.

To change which pages appear, or their order, use Extract Pages or Reorder Pages first. To join several files before arranging them, use Merge PDF.

Tips and troubleshooting

• With Automatic orientation the first page decides. Portrait pages give landscape sheets for 2, 6 and 8 per sheet and portrait sheets for 4, 9 and 16. Choose Portrait (tall) or Landscape (wide) to set it yourself.
• The sheet size only sets the new pages: A4 is 210 by 297 mm and Letter is 8.5 by 11 inches. The original pages are scaled to fit either way.
• Small spacing leaves an 18-point margin (about 6 mm) around the sheet and 10 points between pages; Large uses 36 and 18 points. No space fills the sheet edge to edge, which a printer may clip.
• Down, then across fills the first column before the second. The diagram shows the order before you create the file.
• When the page count does not divide evenly, the last sheet is partly empty: 7 pages at 4 per sheet make 2 sheets, with 3 pages on the second.
• Links, form fields and comments are not copied, and the card warns you when the file has any. Run Flatten PDF first to keep what fields and comments show.
• An encrypted file stops with "This PDF is encrypted, even if it opens without a password." Remove the protection with Unlock PDF first.

How Pages per Sheet works in your browser

pdf-lib opens the file and reads each page's crop box, the area a viewer shows, and its rotation. When you click Create PDF, a new document is created and every page is embedded into it as a Form XObject cut to that crop box, which keeps its text, fonts and vector graphics as they are. For each page the tool works out the cell from the grid and the order, the scale that fits the page into the cell without distortion, and the position that centres it. A page stored with a rotation is drawn turned by the same angle, so it appears the way your viewer shows it.

A new sheet is added each time the count is reached, and the optional border is a thin grey rectangle around each placed page. Before saving, the embedded pages are compressed and every object the sheets do not use is removed, so the original annotations, with their field values, comment text and link addresses, are not in the new file. The document is saved, wrapped in a Blob and offered on the result card. The page loads pdf-lib from cdnjs.cloudflare.com when it opens, and, apart from Google Analytics while it is switched on, that is the only network request involved; your PDF and the new file stay in the tab's memory and are gone when you close it.

Frequently asked questions