N-up PDF

Lay several PDF pages on one printed sheet — for handouts, proofs and drafts that do not need a page each.

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What this tool does

N-up PDF builds a new document whose sheets each carry several of your pages. Pick 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 or 16 pages per sheet and the grid follows the choice: 2 is a single column of two, 4 and 9 are square grids, 6 and 8 are two columns, and 16 is four by four. Every page is scaled to the largest size that fits its cell without altering its proportions and centred there, so nothing is stretched or cropped. Pages carrying a rotation are placed as a reader sees them, which keeps a sideways scan from landing sideways on the sheet.

Three settings shape the sheet and a fourth marks it up. The sheet margin and the gap between pages are given in millimetres and start at 10 and 4 — raise the margin when a printer cannot reach the edge of the paper, and raise the gap when the sheet is going to be cut up. Placement order is either left to right and then down, or top to bottom and then across, the second being what a two-column reading order needs. The optional hairline traces each placed page rather than its cell, so it marks the true page edge on a scan whose white margins would otherwise vanish into the paper.

Sheet size is A4, US Letter, A3, or the size of the document's first page, and orientation is Portrait, Landscape or Best fit. Best fit weighs the shape of that first page against the shape of the grid, which gives the arrangement you would expect for slides and landscape scans but is worth checking at 2 up: a portrait document comes out as two pages stacked on a portrait sheet, not side by side on a landscape one. Choosing Landscape turns the grid as well as the sheet: at 2 up on A4 with the default spacing that draws an A4 page about 40 per cent bigger in each direction, though a page closer to square gains less, and at 4 up the same switch shrinks a portrait page rather than enlarging it.

The imposition runs in this browser tab through pdf-lib, so the document is read and rewritten on your own machine and no copy goes anywhere. What this is not is a booklet imposition: pages are placed in the order they already sit in, and a saddle-stitched booklet needs them reshuffled so the last page prints beside the first, so folding a stack of these sheets will not give you a readable one. The second thing to weigh is that each page is embedded as drawn content. Text and vector art rescale cleanly, but clickable links, annotations, form fields and the bookmark outline are left behind, so keep the original for anything other than printing.

How to use it

  1. Choose the PDF. One document per run — drop several and each is imposed on its own sheets, so combine them with Merge PDF first if they belong together. A password-protected file cannot be read, and the job stops pointing at Unlock PDF.
  2. Set the pages per sheet. 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 or 16. The grid is fixed for each number, and the sheet count is simply your page count divided by it and rounded up.
  3. Pick the sheet and its orientation. A4, US Letter, A3, or whatever the first page measures. Leave orientation on Best fit, or force Portrait or Landscape when you already know the layout you want.
  4. Adjust the margin, gap, border and order. Both spacings are in millimetres. Switch the hairline on when the pages will be cut apart, and set the placement order to match the way the sheet will be read.

Processing & privacy

Runs on your device. Your file is processed directly in this browser.

Common use cases

Handouts for a talk

Nine slides to a sheet gives an audience something to annotate without printing forty separate pages for every person in the room.

Proofing a long document

Four pages per sheet shows the shape of a report — headings, tables, awkward page breaks — several spreads at a time instead of one.

An index for a scanned bundle

Sixteen pages on one A3 sheet turns a stack of scans into something you can run an eye over to find the page you actually want.

Cutting the cost of a draft

A 200-page manuscript at 4 up and printed double-sided leaves the printer as 25 sheets of paper rather than 200.

Questions

Is my PDF uploaded?
No. The whole imposition happens in this browser tab using pdf-lib, which the site serves and the browser caches after the first run, so the document stays on your machine and the tool still works with the network switched off.
Can I make a folded booklet with this?
No. Pages are laid down in their existing order, while a saddle-stitched booklet needs them reordered in folding pairs — page one beside the last, page two beside the second to last. Fold these sheets and the reading order comes out wrong.
Why did my two portrait pages end up one above the other?
Best fit compares the page's proportions with the grid's, and at 2 up a portrait document lands stacked on a portrait sheet. Set orientation to Landscape for the side-by-side arrangement, which also prints both pages larger.
Do links, form fields and bookmarks survive?
No. Each page is embedded as drawn content, so text and vector graphics stay sharp at the reduced scale, but everything a PDF holds as an annotation is dropped along with the outline pane: clickable links, comments, highlights and the form fields themselves. A filled form is the case that bites — its boxes arrive empty, because the answers live in the widgets rather than the page. Run it through Flatten PDF first and the values become part of the page, so they survive the imposition.
What happens to the last sheet if the pages do not divide evenly?
The leftover cells stay empty. Five pages at 4 up produces two sheets, the second holding a single page in its first cell — no blank filler is inserted to round the grid out.
It says the margin and gap leave no room. What does that mean?
Both numbers are taken off the sheet before it is divided into cells, so a generous margin combined with 16 pages per sheet can leave nothing worth dividing. Be aware that the check is a hard floor of four points per cell, not a judgement about legibility: a 60 mm margin at 16 up on A4 still leaves cells 55 points wide and the sheet is written anyway, far too small to read. Only when a cell collapses past four points does the run stop and ask you to cut the margin, the gap or the number of pages.
My document mixes page sizes. What happens?
Each page is fitted to its own cell independently, so a wide page sits at a smaller scale than a narrow one on the same sheet. Run it through Change PDF Page Size first if you need every page at a consistent scale.
Will the file get smaller?
Barely. Every original page is still in the document, with its fonts and images, just drawn at a reduced scale on a shared sheet. Compress PDF is the tool for shrinking the byte count.

Related tools

  • Merge PDF — Combine several PDFs into one document in the order you choose.
  • Split PDF — Split one PDF into separate documents by page range.
  • Compress PDF — Reduce PDF file size while preserving the quality that matters.
  • PDF to JPG — Export every page of a PDF as a JPG image.
  • JPG to PDF — Turn one or many JPG photos into a single PDF.
  • Protect PDF — Add a password and set permissions on a PDF.