Quick and Dirty Page Imposition Using Only Acrobat

Today I was working on a 1-up half page flyer of which I need to print multiple copies. Normally, I would go into InDesign and manually impose the document 2-up and then export a new PDF. But I wanted to see if I could get an acceptable result right within Acrobat. The following screenshots are of the Thumbnails panel, but you can achieve the same thing using the Organize Pages tool.

Thumbnails Panel: 1 page

Much like in the other Adobe programs, if you hold down and Option and drag, you will duplicate the object. In this case, I held down Option while dragging the thumbnail. Now I've duplicated page 1. Read more about that technique here.

Thumbnails Panel: 2 pages

Next, go to the Print dialog box and choose the "Multiple" tab. This will only work if you have more than one page. That's why I had to duplicate page 1, so that Acrobat would actually have multiple pages to put together on the same page.

Print Dialog Box: Multiple Tab

You can also make a four up imposition using the same method. Duplicate pages 1 and 2 again, to get four of the same pages. Then choose 4 up per page.

Print Dialog Box: Print four up!

Now, remember that the borders won't be exact all the way around, so this imposition method won't be suitable for all applications. But if you just need to take a flyer and quickly print out multiple on a page, this can be a great tool. Also note that this trick won't work in Adobe Reader, because it requires page editing.