How do I duplicate a page in a PDF?

The count is a total, not an extra

This is where the job goes wrong most often, and it costs a sheet of paper every time. The number you set is how many times the page should exist when the work is finished, not how many copies to add on top. Ask for ten tickets and you set ten, not nine.

Typing the page selection

• 3 duplicates page 3 and nothing else.
• 1, 4 duplicates two separate pages.
• 2-5 duplicates a run of four pages.
• An empty field duplicates every page in the document, which is what you want when the whole file is the master.

Duplicating is not n-up printing

Two jobs get mixed up here. Duplicating repeats a page in the file, so a one-page ticket becomes forty pages with one ticket per sheet. N-up, also called imposition, tiles several pages onto a single sheet, so those forty tickets land on ten sheets four at a time. Duplication lives in the document and travels with it; n-up is a setting applied at print time and vanishes if the file is printed somewhere else. A sheet of labels usually needs both: duplicate to the final count, then print n-up.

Sending a repeated master to a print shop

• Duplicate to the exact final count. The file is the order, so the shop should not have to infer a quantity from an email.
• Print or export at 100% with no "fit to page" or "shrink oversized" scaling. Resampling is the usual reason a duplicated barcode or QR code stops scanning.
• If the artwork runs to the paper edge, add bleed before duplicating rather than after, so every copy carries it.
• Check the page count in the finished file against what you asked for before sending it.

Two things to fix before or after

Fillable form fields are identified by name, so duplicated fields share a value and typing into one copy fills all of them. Run the file through Flatten PDF first if the copies need to be filled in independently. Printed page numbers have the opposite problem: "Page 2 of 7" is drawn onto the page and will be wrong on every copy, so renumber with Add page numbers once the duplication is done.

Related

• How to add a blank page to a PDF covers the padding arithmetic for duplex and booklets.
• Extract PDF pages pulls a selection into a new file.
• Split a PDF breaks one file into several.
• PDF page organiser handles copy, delete and reorder visually.