Preparing your document for printing in Microsoft Word is straightforward, but it requires important changes of certain settings before generating a print PDF.
Document Setup
Page Sizes and Bleed:
You need to begin by knowing the size of the booklet you wish to print. To check or change the size of your document in Word, navigate to Layout > Size to adjust page dimensions. You will be required to add bleed to your PDF for printing, so select 'More Paper Sizes' and include bleed into your dimensions. Remember, add 3mm bleed to each edge, totalling 6mm to the width and height.
Margins:
Ensure a minimum of 5mm safe zone around the perimeter of your pages for any important text. You can do this by including it into the margins. Go to Layout > Margin > Custom Margins. A recommended margin would be roughly 30mm for each side if your document is a text-heavy print.
Fonts:
While built-in system fonts will normally be embedded automatically, custom fonts require manual embedding.
On Windows, go to Options > Save and select 'Embed fonts in the file'.
On Mac, navigate to Preferences > Save and choose 'Embed fonts in the file'.
You can double check the font embedding in Acrobat Reader by going to Document Properties > Fonts. If your fonts have been embedded correctly, you will see (Embedded Subset) next to the font. If you do not see this, then your font has not been embedded correctly.
Image quality:
For printing a booklet with images and rasterised graphics, we recommend your images should be supplied at full 300dpi. You first need to ensure that you are sourcing the highest quality images, before inserting them into your Word document.
To check the resolution of your images:
Windows – Open the image in your default image previewer and go to the document properties. You will see all the information about that file, including the DPI (dots per inch). You want the image to be around the 300dpi mark.
Mac – Open the image in the default image previewer and go to Tools > Show inspector. A new window will pop up displaying information about the image. You will be able to see here the resolution of the image.
Once you are happy with the images you have embedded into your Microsoft Word document, you will need to ensure that Microsoft Word is set up to display the images in their best quality. This can be altered in the document settings;
Windows – Navigate to Options > Advanced > Image Size and Quality.
Mac – Preferences > Edit > Image Size and Quality.
Under Image Size and Quality. Set the default resolution to 330ppi and tick the ‘Do not compress images in file’ option.
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Mac
Exporting Your File
Arrange your pages to run from the front cover to the back cover with the internal pages running in correct order. Avoid supplying spreads or any other formats. For more information about page order. see here.
To export, go to File > Save As, and select PDF from the File Format drop-down. For best results, export as PDF/x1a file format for print. You can adjust PDF settings under File > Print and selecting Save as Adobe PDF and choosing PDF x1A.
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Mac
After configuring these settings, save your document to a secure location, prepared for upload and printing.