Multiple PDF pages per sheet
Load a PDF and out comes a new PDF with 2, 4, 6 or 9 pages on each sheet, ready to print: perfect for handouts, slides and long documents, to save paper and make them handier. The file never leaves your browser.
What it is for
For printing more compactly: four slides on a sheet to study, two pages per sheet to bind a handout, nine thumbnails for an overview of a long document. It is the «pages per sheet» option in print drivers and in Office, but hidden and different on every computer: here you do it once and get a PDF already laid out, which you then print (or send to print) without thinking about it again.
The proportions are kept
Each original page is shrunk keeping its proportions and centred in its cell: the text is not stretched or squashed. If you put two portrait A4 pages on an A4 sheet turned landscape, they sit side by side at full size; if you keep it portrait, they sit one above the other, smaller. The layout fills the sheet from the top left, as you read, so the page order stays right.
The grid for each choice
Two pages per sheet go side by side (or one above the other); four in a 2×2 grid; six in 2×3; nine in 3×3. Between one page and the next there is a small white gap and a margin all around, so when you fold or cut you do not cut the content. You can choose the sheet size (A4, Letter, A3) and the orientation.
How it is checked to be right
A layout made by a program must be tested on the numbers, not by eye: here the sum of where each page ends up is checked geometrically (no cell leaves the sheet, none overlaps another, the proportions stay as they started), and the PDF produced is read back by an external program that counts the pages and checks each one was really inserted. A sheet with one page overlapping another is the typical fault, and the test catches it.
What it does not do
It does not print: it makes the PDF, you launch the print. It does not shrink the text beyond what is needed to fit it (if you put nine dense pages on a sheet, they will be tiny: that is physics, not a fault). If the PDF is password-protected remove it first with Remove the password from a PDF; to reorder or split the pages there is Organise a PDF, and to print it as a booklet PDF booklet.