Expert: James Fritz - 3/18/2008

Question
QUESTION: I have a 17x11 Indesign CS2 doc that will fold to 8 1/2 x 11. I want to print to PDF on 2 pages so right-left sides both print at full 8 1/2x11 (client doesn't have printer for 17x11 paper). When I tile and print, Indesign forces me to reduce to 96% to avoid it going onto more than 2 pages. Indesign has option to print "upper left" at full size, but not "upper right." Is there a workaround?

ANSWER: Valerie.

You may run into issues when you are trying to print out your 11x17 layout on 2 letter pages. The problem is that your letter sized printer will not be able to print all the way to the edge, there for there will white gaps in the middle of your layout. Your best option would be to layout your piece as a 2 paged 8.5x11 and then your client could print it out easier.

If that is not an option, you can also try changing the tiling options in the print menu to manual and remove the overlap. This is theory would let your print your piece on two pages, but in reality I doubt this will work since the printer can not print all the way out to the edges.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks for your help.
I'm not concerned about the printer not printing to the edge. The problem boils down that when creating a PDF using tiling, Indesign puts Page Info in upper left corner (even with all file info boxes unchecked) and that throws all the spacing off, forcing me to reduce the page content to 96% in order to stay on 2 8.5x11 pages. There doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of it. I can get the left side of page content at full size on 8.5x11 by using page position: upper left. Indesign doesn’t add  the Page Info in this case. That’s just what I want. For the right side I've tried manual tiling with 0 overlap, and moving the zero point, but Indesign prints the Page Info and again forces me to reduce the page content to 96%. Since everything gets scaled down a bit and shifts, it can be hard for the client to proof. I talked to my printer and I can’t set this up on 8.5x11 facing pages.

Thanks so much.


Answer
When I replicated your setup, I did not have the page info get added. Are you running the latest version of ID CS2 which is 4.0.5. There have been many bug fixes.

Anyway, I have another solution for you. Open your 11x17 ID file and export it as a PDF at full size. Then inside Acrobat, just crop the file in half and save it as the 1st page. Then open up the full size and crop the second half and save it as the second page.