You might have heard of the term ‘collate’ when buying printing supplies, but been unsure of what it actually means.
Collating is when printer pages are arranged in a particular order when printing a multipack document. This is in a sequential number format.
Imagine you wanted to print three copies of a three page document. An uncollated print would look as follows:
1,1,1
2,2,2
3,3,3
Whereas a collation would look as follows:
1,2,3
1,2,3
1,2,3
Why Is Collation Useful?
Collating when printing is useful if you want each copy of a document to come through as a pre-sorted ‘pack’.
Imagine you were printing a small book of colouring pages. It may be easier if each copy comes out ‘ready to go’.
Why Might I Not Want to Use Collation?
As much as a useful feature collating is, it may not be appropriate for every single print job.
If you need to work in batches (for instance, you need to stamp the first page of each copy), it may be easier to print uncollated. Instead of having a pre-made ‘set’, you instead have easy access to all copies of the same page.
Although it’s not usually a huge issue, collated printing can be slightly slower than uncollated, due to the printer having to ‘arrange’ the pages.
How do I Print Collated?
When you go to print a document, you should be able to choose the number of copies of your document that you require. Choose any number above 1. There should then be a checkbox or dropdown for the Collate setting.
It should look something like this:
Likewise, you should be able to toggle to uncollected printing:
I can’t decide whether to select collated or uncollated printing?
In most circumstances, collated printing is probably the better choice.
Use uncollated printing if you have a specific reason to do so.
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