Print or convert a portrait A3 PDF as 2x landscape A4 (without white margins)

0

I'm trying to print an A3 PDF portrait poster as two A4 (on top of each other in landscape) which I'll tape together. My printer can only print A4 pages.

Currently either only the top half prints of OR when printing in poster mode in Adobe Acrobat there is a huge white margin on either side of the poster.

I've tried changing playing around with the source paper (a4/a3) and even tried creating new paper sizes as well as changing the layout, all to no avail.

I have access to a Win7 and Mac Yosemite. Adobe Acrobat Reader on both. Please let me know if I need another program like Preview.app or Acrobat Pro.

Clearly I'm not doing something right. Any advice would be appreciated. Apologies if I've posted in the wrong place or if this has already been answered. I've already seen the following pages but either the solution was not clear or I did not find it useful:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/12305/split-a-single-page-pdf-into-multiple-pages

Tiling double-sided A3 PDF onto A4 paper

Edit: Okay so I clicked on the Poster tab in Adobe Acrobat's print dialog and changed the scaling down (to 93%) until two pages showed up on the right-hand-side. I then managed to print off the two A4 pages as required except that there is a white margin around each A4 printed paper. I even tried the A4 source with no margins but to no avail. Regardless, this doesn't feel like the proper way of doing it.

questioner56

Posted 2019-08-12T18:57:32.673

Reputation: 23

Answers

0

This is the same answer as in the first link you gave, but hopefully I can make it clearer.

Using Adobe Acrobat Reader, select "Poster" in the print dialogue box. Set the paper size to A4, orientation to Landscape, and it will then print the A3 poster on 2 A4 sheets.

You can also specify the overlap between the sheets.

EDIT

You need to realise that most printers have a margin of 5mm or more, within which they cannot print. Hence, a full A3 will require more than 2 A4 printer sheets. That is why you need to scale down (I used 96%), and why the A4 sheets will show a white border.

There also seems to be a problem with Acrobat. Below are details and a fix.

Acrobat Reader DC does tile for me, but it refuses to print an A3 as 2 landscape A4s. However, PDF-XChange Editor works fine.

I created the following A3 PDFenter image description here

Printing it from Acrobat gave me these 4 pages:

enter image description here

However, PDF-XChange Editor produced what you require:enter image description here

hdhondt

Posted 2019-08-12T18:57:32.673

Reputation: 3 244

1Thank you hdhondt. Please let me clarify. When the scale is 100% it shows 4 pages will print. However when it's scaled back down to 93% it shows 2 pages will print but also shows a white margin around the poster. Overlap doesn't change the margins. I'm certain the poster is A3 (document properties shows it's 11.69x16.54in). Why would the scaling need to change? Could this be related to my printer's A4 settings? – questioner56 – 2019-08-13T10:17:12.133

I've edited my answer to detail a problem with Acrobat, and to deal with your margins. – hdhondt – 2019-08-14T00:34:04.963

Thank you hdhondt for clarifying. I think it could be a printer issue where the printer can't print without a certain margin – questioner56 – 2019-08-15T15:52:37.940

As I said in my edit, that is the case for most printers. – hdhondt – 2019-08-15T22:58:11.467