A booklet from any PDF
A booklet is a stack of sheets folded down the middle, with two pages on each side of every sheet. It is the format of event programs, church bulletins, small manuals, zines, recipe collections, short stories and school handouts. Making one by hand is a puzzle: on the first sheet, the last page sits next to the first, and the order inside follows a pattern that is easy to get wrong.
This tool solves the puzzle. It reorders the pages of your PDF and places them two per landscape sheet, so that when you print on both sides and fold, page 1 is the cover and everything follows in order.
Blank pages to complete the count
Each folded sheet holds four pages: two on the front and two on the back. That is why a booklet always has a number of pages that is a multiple of 4. If your PDF has, say, 10 pages, the tool adds 2 blank pages at the end to reach 12, so the order still works when you fold.
If you would rather decide where the blank pages go, for example a blank page behind the cover, add them to your document before making the booklet, with “Organize PDF”. And if you want page numbers, add them first with “Page numbers”, so they follow the reading order and not the printing order.
How to print it correctly
Print the file double-sided and choose to flip on the short edge, which some print dialogs call “short-edge binding” or “flip up”. If you flip on the long edge, every back side will come out upside down. Keep the scale at 100% so the margins stay even.
If your printer can't print on both sides, print the odd sheets first, put the stack back in the tray turned as your printer requires, and print the even ones. Try it with one sheet before printing the whole booklet. Once printed, keep the sheets in order, fold the stack in half and staple it along the fold if you have a long-reach stapler.
Text stays sharp, and your file stays private
The pages are scaled down to fit half a sheet, but they are not converted to images: text stays as real text and prints crisp. Links and form fields from the original are lost, which doesn't matter on paper.
Everything happens in your browser. Your PDF is not uploaded and no copy is kept. The tool is free, with no account, no watermark and no limit on use. For simply putting several pages on one sheet, without folding, use “Pages per sheet” instead.