How to print double sided from your PC

This is a short guide explaining how you can change your printer settings on your PC so that you can print double sided at The Consortium — these instructions may also work on computers outside of The Consortium. The example uses Microsoft Word, although the menus should be approximately the same when printing from other programmes.

1. Click File > Print, as you usually would to print a document. A menu similar to this should appear:

Above: Figure 1.

2. Now click on the ‘Properties’ button. If there is no Properties button, click on the ‘Preferences’ button. (If you have neither buttons please let us know by typing a comment at the bottom of this post.)

The Properties/Preferences window will differ depending on which printer you have selected. Most of the time it will look like this:

Above: Figure 2.

If your Properties window does not look like this go down to step 5. If your Properties window does look like this proceed to step 3, below.

3. Where it says “2-Sided Printing” (highlighted with an arrow in figure 2), select ‘Tablet’ or ‘Book’ depending on which way up you want the two sides of the page to be.

If you choose Book, both sides of the page will print the same way up. If you choose Tablet, the reverse side of the page will print upside down.

4. Now click ‘OK’ and print your document.

5. For some printers (duplex printers) the Properties window will look more like this:

Above: Figure 3.

In this situation click on the blue “Duplex” link (see Figure 3).

The following menu will appear in the same window:

Above: Figure 4.

6. Click on the drop down menu arrowed in figure 4 and select either ‘Left Binding’ or ‘Top binding’, depending on whether you want both sides to print the same way up or if you want them to print opposite ways up.

That’s it

Hopefully this will help us save some paper in the office. The option to print double sided should be especially useful if you need to print a large document such as a report. You can use the ‘Book’ option to make your report easier to read, lighter and more eco-friendly. This might even subtly impress the recipient of your report, if they happen to be environmentally minded!

If you have found these instructions have not worked on your PC please use the comments form below to feed back.