Save Paper, Print Multiple Pages Per Sheet

SUMMARY: Save paper by printing multiple pages per sheet, useful when making hard copies of larger documents.

This is for beginners, written because not everyone knows about this feature. Do you print many documents, spreadsheets, or web pages and tire of using so much paper? Besides the possible environmental impact, paper (especially quality paper) can eat into your budget.

Did you know that many printers offer the ability to print multiple pages of information per sheet? While this makes the text and images smaller, for many the documents may still be readable. Multi-page printing can cut paper usage in half or more, and if you are printing a large document such as a 100+ page manual, the savings may add up.

While instructions for accessing this feature differs amongst printers, for the below example, let's assume you are in Microsoft Word 2007 and using an older Epson printer.

1. After loading / accessing a document you wish to print, selecting the application's Print feature (usually the Ctrl + P shortcut works) should open a "Print" dialog box such as the one below.

2. Select your desired printer (if it is not the default) and look for a "Preferences" or "Properties" button, and then click it.

Accessing printer properties from the Microsoft Word 2007 Print dialog box. The dialog box for your application may differ.

3. The printer's properties dialog box should appear. Look through the tabs and options to find a section called "Multi-Page", "Print Multiple Pages Per Sheet", or similar, and enable it.

In the below example, the Epson printer has the "Multi-Page" feature in the "Page Layout" tab. Again your printer's properties box may differ.

Enabling multi-page printing for a particular Epson printer

4. Choose how many pages you wish to print per sheet. While some printers may support 4 or more, doing so may make the text too small to read.

5. Clicking "OK" should exit the printer properties dialog box and return you to the Print dialog box. From there print the document as normal.

Note that you should test this feature out on a small document (just a couple of pages) before printing something very large, just to make sure you are comfortable reading the smaller text.