Use Word to create a folded booklet

Self-publishing (where you cut out the publisher by using an internet-based web service to produce and print books) may be popular but it’s still over the top for what many people need.

Instead, in this workshop we’ll show you how to turn a document into a folded booklet using Microsoft Word, complete with cover, contents page and page numbers that are positioned correctly for odd and even pages. You can use ordinary A4 paper (the booklet prints sideways, two pages to a sheet) and although this workshop focuses on Word 2007, it works just as well in Word 2010, too.

We’re going to create a short book of poems, but the techniques here would work equally well on other types of home-grown publication, such as a newsletter or collection of short stories.

Step 1

Launch Word and type the title of the first poem, then type the poem itself. Press Enter at the end of the last line, click the Insert tab on the Ribbon and choose Blank Page to insert a new, empty page after the cursor position. Type in the title of another poem and then add the text. Then press Enter again and insert another blank page. Keep going until you’ve got four poems on four separate pages. Here we’ve zoomed out using the magnification slider at the bottom-right corner to show you.

Step 2

Navigate to the start of the document and highlight the heading of the first poem. Click the Home tab and then find the Styles section on the ribbon. See the one called Heading 1? Click that to change the typeface of the first poem’s title, then press Enter once to open a gap between the title and the body of the poem. Repeat for the other three poems so they each begin with a title that uses the same Heading 1 style and each has a gap between title and text.

Step 3

Save the document as usual. Navigate back to the beginning and position the text-entry cursor in front of the first letter of the first poem’s title. Click the Insert tab and choose Blank Page - this is where we’re going to put a simple contents page. Scroll up and click at the top of the new empty page. Click the References tab and click Table of Contents. When the dropdown menu opens, choose the first one there - Automatic Table 1.