Manual Duplex Printing - Quick Guide

This Quick Guide is for those without a duplex capable printer, who want to manually print duplex.

Alternative: Manual Duplex Printing

To manually print double sided, you need to work out the way your printer feeds your pages through, so you know you are printing your pages on the right side and the correct orientation.

Print a test page first! 

1. Grab a scrap piece of paper and mark an X in the top right corner and place it in your feeder or tray face up. 

2. Print a single page and note where the X is on your final print job. This will let you know if your pages need to be face up or face down, and which ends are the top and bottom of your pages. 

3. Once you work this out, we suggest writing or drawing a little reference guide for yourself and either sticking it on the side of the printer, or keeping it close by for future reference. This way you should only have to do this test once.

Now that you have worked out your printer's feed orientation, we can move onto printing a manual duplex page.

1. Print a single page of your insert PDF by selecting ‘pages: 1’ in the pages to print section of the print window

2. Once the page has printed, put that printed page back into your printer. Make sure the blank side is going to be the side printed on and that your page will flip on the long edge to avoid upside down pages.

3. Print a single page of your inserts PDF but this time select ‘pages: 2’ from the pages to print section. This will print the second page of the document on the back of page 1 that we previously printed

Once you have completed this test and know your pages print double sided with the correct orientation, you can move onto printing the whole document. 

1. In the pages to print section, select ‘Print odd pages’ (This may be in the more options section of pages to print)

2. For your odd pages you tick the reverse box. If you do not print your pages in reverse for your odd pages, your final pages will not be in order

3. Once the pages have printed, put those printed pages back into your printer. Make sure the blank side is going to be the side printed on and that your page will flip on the long edge to avoid upside down pages. 

4. Change your pages to print section to ‘Print even pages’ and untick the reverse box to put your pages back in the correct order.

Your double sided pages are now printed and you can move onto the next step.

After Printing

For instructions on how to arrange and punch you pages, check out our "After Printing - Quick Guide".

If you need further help, you can watch our tutorial video on printing inserts at home here. Alternatively you are welcome to contact us at hello@preppamint.com.