Actions In Illustrator

Does Adobe Illustrator have actions that work like in PhotoShop. If so, could you point me to a tutorial that demonstrates this feature, preferably video tutorial. I have as many as 10,000 PDFs that I have to put logo and company name in a same specific place and save. The trick is they are in different folders and are not named sequentially. I am open to suggestions.

PDF are not meant for editing.
When opening in Illustrator you do all kinds of terrible things to a PDF. Unless the PDFs have an embedded Illustrator file part (which can only happen when they were designed in Illustrator)
You might rather look for possibilities to do this in Acrobat.
how do you insert an image into acrobat pro X
or
Adobe Acrobat X Pro * Adding unifying page elements

Similar Messages

How to solve the Error in Action for illustrator cs3

Through action in illustrator cs3 i changed the document mode RGB to CMYK via Visual Basic. But sometimes it throws 2 different kinds of error messages.
CODE:
appRef.DoScript "Change", "Convert"
While (appRef.ActionIsRunning)
WScript.sleep 1000
Wend
Error 1:
Could not complete the Play Command because the action is playing.
Error 2:
The Object "Document Color Mode: CMYK Color" is not currently available.
Could you please explain how to solve this error.

The input data provided as the first argument to ore.tableApply and rqTableEval are physically being moved from Oracle Database to the database server R engine, and then serially operating on the entire table The benefit to using ore.tableApply/rqTableEval in this case is the potentially greater amount of RAM on the database server. But it's important to note that R’s memory limitations still apply in this case.
You may have already seen the blog post on Managing Memory Limits and Configuring Exadata for Embedded R Execution where we discuss setting memory limits for the database server R engine. These suggestions can be used to load reasonably sized data tables, and you may still encounter limitations when using a very large table.
In contrast to the "table apply" functions, the "group Eval" and "row eval (" functions are parallel-enabled embedded R execution functions. They support data-parallel execution, where one or more R engines perform the same R function, or task, on different partitions of data. The following training and blog links should be helpful in choosing the correct function for your use case:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-technologies/r/r-enterprise/learnmore/ore-1-4-embedded-r-execution-s…
http://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/invoking_r_scripts_via_oracle1
http://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/invoking_r_scripts_via_oracle2
http://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/invoking_r_scripts_via_oracle3
http://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/invoking_r_scripts_via_oracle4
http://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/invoking_r_scripts_via_oracle5
Sherry

Adding actions to Illustrator

I'm trying to add "masking actions" to Illustrator but it won't copy. I'm using the 30-day trial version of illustrator. Could that me why I'm not able to add actions?

Find and Replace simple action crashes Illustrator CC

I am now trying Creative Cloud and I came with this bug. When I use a simple action to find and replace a text string in my file it will crash the Illustrator.
My actions is pretty simple:
Find > "aa" (I do have to check all the options to work)
Find and Replace > "aa" to "2014.01.29"
This action works well if I use it once by the Edit menu, but if I close the Illustrator and reopen, it'll not work again and will crash the software.
Everyday I do update my action to actual date, so the action will work normally but sometimes I do have to close the app and I have to make the action again and again everytime.
This was a problem already in CS5, last version that I used.
I'm using Windows 8.

Msot likely this isthe problem of the action playing back to fast.
Actions Flyout >> playback options > set to altast 1 second
You will need to change this setting each time you resart illustrator

SVG filters disappearing from Actions whenever Illustrator is closed

Hi all.
I'm working on a file I'd like to use as a template, and it will include some actions.
Here's the problem - once Illustrator has been closed and reopened, while the custom actions still show up, they no longer contain the SVG filters. It requires the user to reload the set of actions every time they reopen Illustrator.
Part of the point of the template is to reduce the extra steps in workflows, so I'm hoping someone can suggest a way to fix this.
Discussed it with other designers on my team, and they suggested we include the actions in the Presets folder, hoping it would automatically do some sort of "fresh install" of the actions when we load Illustrator. We tried that - I actually added the actions into the default set, and though it loads the actions, they still show as having lost the filters. Again, the only way to get them back is to reload the actions separately.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

I'm not familiar with ExtendScript, but the filters I am using are VERY simple - do their default filters include ExtendScript...? (seems unlikely, but then again, clueless about ExtendScript).
Here's one I am using:
<filter width="200%" height="200%" id="AI_GlowBlur" y="-50%" x="-50%">
<feGaussianBlur stdDeviation="5"></feGaussianBlur>
</filter>
Could it have anything to do with the fact that they are inserted from the menu? Although like I said, the actions work fine until Illustrator is closed and reopened. :-( So probably not.
Ugh.

Problems with Actions in Illustrator CS6

Actions in CS6 have a lot of bugs. Can not get an action to not have a stroke on it, can not get the "add layer below" to stay in an action.

Tyhe stroke problem appears to be a bug.
You can report it ti here:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Illustrator CS6 Running an Action on Multiple files in a folder

I'm having trouble getting this to work and was hoping someone could shed some light for me.
I created a action in Illustrator CS6 (on a PC) which opens PNG files, scales them onto a 8.5 x 11 page, saves them as a PDF into a output folder on my desktop and then closes the page. The action works great and does exactly what I had hoped for.
Here is my issue:
I now have a need to do this on multiple files at the same time. Using the Illustrator Help menu, I found out about Batch processing. The tutorial says that a batch can be run on a single file or on a folder of files. Bingo! That's what I want. Problem is, I can't get it to work.
After setting up the batch with the following settings: (note: I didn't use a destination folder because I have the action saving the pdf into an output folder on the desktop).
According to the help page, it said to use Override Action "Open" commands which Opens the files from the specified folder and ignores any Open commands recorded as part of the original action. I thought this is what I needed to open all the files in the folder, because when recording my action, I had to use the open command to open a png file. It wouldn't just let me choose a folder. If I don't have the open command in the action, nothing happens.
My main issue is getting multiple files from within my input folder to open when running the action. The only file that opens is the file that I recorded while creating the action. If I remove that file from the folder, nothing happens at all.
Please help!
Thank you,

I need to create a Action in Illustrator CS6 where i have to open set of files from the desired folder and convert the files to eps format. but i need to save as CS5 version instead of CS6.
I tried creating the Action it works perfectly except the CS6 to CS5 conversion.
Is there any way to achive converting to CS5 in Action?
please help.

Issues with Illustrator CS5 Actions

Hello All,
I'm trying to create an illustrator action that isn't functioning properly on playback. I'm using Illustrator CS5 on a Macbook. In setting up for print production of CD's and DVD's, on what's called an OMAP; I have to copy, paste and then place the image at a specific point on the artboard. Then I repeat 143 times. I'd like to create an action that pastes and moves each of the 144 disc images to the precise x and y coordinates given. I've tried creating this action through the steps outlined below, but the result of the playback is never consistent and the images end up off the artboard. Any tips or answers are welcome.
1. Copy disc image from an existing illustrator file.
2. In the action panel of my OMAP template document I create a new action, give it a name and click Record.
3. I hit command>V to paste.
4. In the transform panel I put in the x and y coordinates
(Then repeat)
Update: I was able to create the action in Illustrator CS4 and playback works perfect. However, my client uses Illustrator CS 5 on a PC (as I use most of the time); and, the action will not play back properly in CS 5. I've updated both mine and their software to the latest version of CS 5 (illustrator 15.0.2 i believe) and this action still will not function right. I've tried re-creating the action in CS 5 with no success on playback. For a demonstration of this, please watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo_avyQLAFw&feature=youtu.be. Any advice/solution would be appreciated.

I think I may have it solved... or perhaps just a workaround. I duplicate the x axis coordinate in the action's playback. Then rearrange the playback to: paste> x axis coordinate> y axis coordinate> x axis coordinate. This seems to be working for some odd reason. Unfortunately, this doesn't work if the x axis is simply put after the y axis: paste> y axis coordinate> x axis coordinate. The x has to be given before y, then x again: paste> x axis coordinate> y axis coordinate> x axis coordinate = desired result. This is really strange. If anyone has a better solution, please reply. I'll update the actions for my client and see if this works in it's entirety, on windows and mac, and then update this post.

Using action to save at a specific designated folder in Illustrator CS6

Hello,
I'm trying to create actions in Illustrator and one specific command I can't seemed to resolve and hopeful some one has a solution:
My action is geared toward saving pdfs because I create multiple pdfs and the tedious 3 or 4 steps of executing this task can be repetitive after awhile.
With that said, I started an action where it allows me to hit one button, and it saves to the folder however, the action always saves the pdfs in the same folder. Ideally, the pdfs should be saved at its respective folder (e.g. file A should have a pdf in file A folder, file B - a pdf in file B folder, and etc.)
Does any one know how to tweak the action to do just that.
Suggestions welcome!
Thanks,
SNTM

Nope. Actions are "dumb" and store all info absolute. You would have to have an action for each separate path. Otherwise you will have to create a short script that provides this functionality.
Mylenium

Illustrator CS5.5 Transforms in Actions not working properly?

I'm doing a simple transform action. I want to move an object to a value on the Y axis. First of all, after recording the action, and setting the Y value to 64 px, the action is recorded as 64 pt, not px. This happens regardless of my 'Units' setting. Second, it ADDS the value to the current Y value, instead of just setting the new value, rendering the action useless.
Am I doing something wrong? I don't see a way to specify an absolute value vs a relative one. Is it just a limitation of Actions in Illustrator?

px and pt are somewhat interchangable within Illustrator. They are both seen as the same relative size. In reality this is because pixels have absolutley no relative size therefore Illustrator uses points for measurements. A point (pt) is a measurment, a pixel (px) is not. This is not something you should be overly concerened with in your circumstances. You can simply consider 1pt equal to 1px.
As for the transform.... transformations, by definition, alter the existing data of an object in a relative manner. The extisting size, location, color, etc is seen as the 'start' point then transformations are applied to those start points. If you have an object sitting at X0Y0 and you move the object 64 pixels downward to X0Y64, the transformation is seen as Y+64, NOT "set to Y64". Therefore, if you have an object sitting at X50Y10 and you perform the same transformation the result is X50Y74.
What may, or may not help, is to use the align buttons in the action before trying to absolutely position an element. For example, set the align to Align to Artboard. Then align left, align top, (or align center, align middle) then move the object to the correct absolute position. This way you position every object at the same XY coordinates before beginning any position transformation and in turn the XY transformation will always be adding values to the same starting point values making the transformations the same.

How do I create custom Photoshop/Illustrator actions in Automator?

Hi all,
I'm doing a video project with some fairly tedious processes involved on my files. I'd like to use Automator but I think I'm missing some key points on how to use it. Google has not yielded anything fruitful on the matter so I decided to bring this to the experts on this board.
Here is the process I'd like to automate. Keep in mind I know how to do each step in its given application, but have not been able to figure out how to plug these into Automator sequence:
- Use Quicktime to covert a movie file into an image sequence
- Take that image sequence and use Illustrator to covert each image in the sequence to vector
- Convert each .ai file produced into a jpeg using Photoshop
I need these steps done for over 100 movie files. My main problem is that Photoshop and Illustrator don't appear in my application list within Automator. Can I add these? If not, I'm not sure I understand how to write an action for either application. I even downloaded some third-party Photoshop scripts and added them but the application icon still does not appear within Automator.
I also tried "record" while doing all the steps manually, but Automator didn't seem to pick up anything I did (unlike the old versions of Apple Script Editor). Please help! Thanks a mil...
Mike

Finicky is not the word for Watch Me Do... I feel like Apple's old record button in Script Editor worked better than this. Anyway, red_menace, thanks for the link - very helpful.
After lots of trial and error, I managed to get my Quicktime script to work. I did a Watch Me Do action, then from the list of those actions in the Watch Me Do step in Automator, I extracted individual actions by dragging them out below to the space for the next step, and a "Run Applescript" step appeared. I put something together with the idea that I could drag a desired movie file onto this Automator application and have it executed. This is what I have so far, in order of Automator steps:
1. Open Finder Items. Got this from a pre-installed action for Finder. I selected Quicktime 7 as the app to open. This assumes a movie file has been dragged onto the application file that Automator creates to open the file in Quicktime and kick off the script.
2. Run Applescript (extracted from the Watch Me Do recording). I adjusted the "delay" time to be long enough as I found having too short of a delay messed up the whole automation. This step is to tell Quicktime to bring up the Export dialogue (a simple Command-E button press). The script is as follows:
on run {input, parameters}
-- Press ⌘E
delay 3
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "keystroke \"e\" using command down"
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
return input
end run
on doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
set endDate to (current date) + timeoutSeconds
repeat
try
run script "tell application \"System Events\"
" & uiScript & "
end tell"
exit repeat
on error errorMessage
if ((current date) > endDate) then
error "Can not " & uiScript
end if
end try
end repeat
end doWithTimeout
3. Run Applescript (again, taken from the Watch Me Do recording). This one was a little trickier because for some reason Watch Me Do was recording my button press of the enter key as an empty set of commas (' '). I poked around online and found that the AppleScript equivalent for enter is "key code 36", so I replaced the blank space with that. I wonder if this is because I'm using a non-Apple keyboard... The script is as follows:
on run {input, parameters}
-- Type 'key code 36'
delay 2
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "keystroke \"
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
return input
end run
on doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
set endDate to (current date) + timeoutSeconds
repeat
try
run script "tell application \"System Events\"
" & uiScript & "
end tell"
exit repeat
on error errorMessage
if ((current date) > endDate) then
error "Can not " & uiScript
end if
end try
end repeat
end doWithTimeout
The above three steps work well for my movie file export from Quicktime, but what I'd REALLY like is to do is repeat these steps for every movie file in a given folder with one click. Any ideas on how I'd accomplish that?
I also tried to string in further actions for Illustrator but no luck - I kept getting errors in Illustrator. First, I got the error "The object "Play Action" is not currently available", and once I figured out how to get past that error (just extended the delay time), I got stuck on the error "Could not complete the Play command because the action is playing". In a nutshell, I'm trying to get Automator to open Illustrator and play an Illustrator Action. Again, open to any ideas. My Illustrator action is a simple one: Live Trace, then save file.
Thanks again for the help on this, folks.

CS4 Illustrator Actions

When creating an action in Illustrator there is a bug in CS4.
I have had this action made in CS3 and it worked fine for a very common task that is always done to our work.
When I create it in CS4 The first step in the action is to "create a layer below" Quick key command is Option Command when you click on the layer button. There are a few other very simple steps to this action after this. After I save the action out and quit Illustrator and open it back up the first part of the action is gone. The Create a layer below part dissapears off the action and then it goes through the rest of it.
This is a vital step in this quick key and constantly falls out no matter what I do. Anyone else have any issues with actions?

It appears so! I t is important that we all file a bug report immediately so it can be fixed.
I am serious if you do not file the report they will think only one person has this problem.
this is what I submitted and if anyone wishes to copy and paste they may do so.
******BUG******
Concise problem statement:
Steps in actions to create layers are lost after quitting Illustrator and relaunching, all other steps in the action are retained.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Create an new action and start the recording
2. Create a new layer
3. Create some other steps
4. Stop the action
5. Quit Illustrator and save the document
6. Relaunch Illustrator
7. Inspect the action
Results: The create layer step is removed from the action.
(This is true of any create layer step in an action)
Expected results: The create layer action should still be retained along with the rest of the action.
This is a must fix bug, does not happen in prior releases.

Illustrator Cs 6 shuts down when I play actions

I create a action in Illustrator CS6. When I play it, it shuts down.
I would appreciate any help I can get.

Try taking your iPad to the Apple Store. Let them take a look at it. This may be a hardware malfunction or software. Il let you know as soon as possible .il look on a few other forum and website.
Good Luck

Illustrator actions stopped remembering pdf preset in CS6

Hi guys,
I used to have my actions set up so i could easily save PDFs with different pdf presets, depending what the work was for (print, magazine ad with bleed, newspaper ad without bleed etc).
Now when I try CS6 and set up these actions in Illustrator it seems like the action wont use the preset I set it up with, and just defaults to the last one used.
Is there something I'm missing or is this indeed a flaw in CS6? Its pretty time-saving for me so it would be a big deal-breaker upgrading to CS6.
thanks

I had pdf actions that saved them to my desktop in CS5. Imported them into CS6, they did not work so rerecorded them in CS6 and they work.

How can I save my actions from previous illustrator versions to import into CC

I have a very good workflow with Illustrator CS6 and it bothers me that I have to re-record all my favourite actions in Illustrator CC. How can I import my actions from CS 6 to CC version?

Janet,
I believe you can use do it in the same way as described in this recent thread (you may need to take the necessary time to locate the specific folder in the old CC):
import settings into cc 2014

Actions In Illustrator

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