what is collated printing

Collated printing refers to how prints are arranged and combined as they print, and is useful if you are printing more than one copy of a large document that needs to be kept in the right order so they can be handed out. When printing multiple copies of a multi-page document, pages are printed in the correct order from the first page to the last page, before the next copy is printed. They are sorted into a correctly assembled sequence for you – so if you are printing multiple copies to hand them out later, it will print them as sets of documents, not as single pages. In contrast, uncollated printing refers to stacks of printed pages in which a stack is comprised of pages of the same information, but each stack of printed paper is different from the other stacks. Collated printing is used when printing multiple copies of a document that has multiple pages that need to be kept in order.