Put four PDF pages on one sheet in a 2 × 2 grid

How to use the PDF 4-up tool

1. Drop a PDF onto the box or press Choose a file.
2. Choose the Page size of the printed sheet: A4, US Letter, US Legal, A3 or A5. Sheets are always portrait.
3. Tick Thin border around each page to frame each cell in light grey, which makes slide outlines clear when slides have white backgrounds.
4. Press Make 4-up PDF and download the result, named with -4up added.

What it does and when to use it

Four pages per sheet is the classic layout for presentation handouts and quick overviews. Audiences can follow a talk with a quarter of the paper, and you can spot layout mistakes across a whole document at a glance. Other good fits:

• Revision sheets made from lecture slides.
• Proof sheets of a brochure or poster series, to check colours and consistency side by side.
• Saving paper on reference material you only need to recognise, such as forms you have already filled.
• Small cards cut from A4 sheets, each quarter a little smaller than A6.

For bigger, more readable pages use the PDF 2-up tool instead. If your slides contain notes or blank pages you do not want in the handout, remove them first with the PDF page deleter.

How it works

Everything runs in your browser with pdf-lib (@cantoo/pdf-lib); the PDF is not uploaded and nothing extra is downloaded. The tool creates a new document whose sheets are the chosen size in portrait. Inside an 8 mm margin, the sheet is divided into two columns and two rows with a 6 mm gap between cells. On A4 each cell is 94 × 137.5 mm.

Each of your pages is embedded as a vector drawing, shrunk to the largest size that fits its cell without changing shape, and centred. Pages with a rotation setting are placed as they appear on screen. With the border option, a thin grey rectangle outlines each cell.

Worked examples

A 10-slide deck with frames. Page size A4, border ticked. The summary reads 10 pages → 3 sheets. Sheets 1 and 2 hold slides 1–4 and 5–8; sheet 3 holds slides 9 and 10 across the top row.

A 24-page report as an overview. A4, no border, gives 6 sheets you can lay out on a table to check headings and images across the whole report.

US Letter handouts. Choose US Letter to print the same grid on 8.5 × 11 inch paper.

Limits and tips

• Links, bookmarks, form fields and the document title are not kept in the new file.
• Text remains real text, so it stays sharp when printed, even at the reduced size.
• Combine with PDF page numbering before making the 4-up file if you want each small page to show its number.
• Password-protected files must be unlocked first with Unlock PDF.