Extract Pages- and the Split- not doing what I expect them to

Question

I have a document created in Illustrator (CS4) which has multiple artboards. I want it split into multiple documents, one art board—> one document with only that artwork. When I use the Extract PAges… and the Split… comands to generate multiple documents, I get the multiple docs (same number of docs created as pages in original doc).
Only thing is every doc has all the artboards and all the artwork as the original doc. I could understand all the artwork being there but all the artboards also?? What's going on?
Appreciate any pointers on this.
Trying to write a JSX to run in AI but struggling so far. Thread for AI solution started here: AS) export single page PDFs from multi-artboards

Answer 1

I don't expect mind reading but I'l settle for careful reading
I tried to explain how pages and artboards are qualitatively different objects only to be told they are the same thing and that's all I needed to say.
I tried to explain that opening the very same file in Illustrator showed a lot more objects than it did in Acrobat. You probably don't remember because you breezed over something that you didn't think you needed to know because you were, at each stage, a step ahead of me (slow down already!).
From my second post:
I can't remember if Splitting gave enumerate files or the one file but either way ALL the artwork was in the enumerate files if they got made [.…] I ended up saving as CS3 .ai files which gives a Save artboards to seperate files option and, unlike the artboard range option on Save As PDF, it actually works.
From my third post
An artboard is not a page as far as Acrobat and Illustrator apps are concerned. I was trying to highlight the distinctly different way the two apps handle them. I can watch a one page with just one shape document in Acrobat become a 20 artboard, 40+ objects layout in Illustrator. Same document interpreted as one Page in Acrobat and 23 artboards in AI.
I was on this forum because even a manual Document Menu> Split… command is not doing what I expected with the AI generated 23pp PDF file. I expected the 23 individual 'artboards' and content to each make a separate file.
Thom Parker wrote:
I don't remember you mentioning that you re-imported the PDF files into Illustrator.  This is an important detail. You also posted to an Acrobat scripting forum and never said you were not interested in an Acrobat Script.  You also never explained the problem you were seeing.  You were never clear.
Covered that but note Illustrator doesn't import PDF files. .ai .eps and .pdf are all native files for Illustrator and just open, sometimes with an additional dialogue to choose a page from multiple pages. It imports .dwg, .svg and that sort of thing relying on translator plugins. This is the fourth time I'm saying I should have posted in Acrobat Win or Mac not scripting, apologies I was scripting when I made OP and probably frustrated. You were more clear it's true, clearly ignoring what I was getting at in each post re artboard cf. page objects.
You see, in a PDF file each page has it's own content stream, i.e., a stream of vector graphics operators.  Graphics can be drawn anywhere in the coordinate space, but the page view is clipped by a crop rectangle.  So graphics can exist in the stream, but never be visible to the user because they are outside the crop.  I get the impression that in Illustrator the Artboards all exist in a single coordinate space? And that the conversion to PDF places this entire coordinate space into a single content stream. Then each page would be a different crop of the same content stream.  If this is the case then I believe there are PDF optimization operations in Acrobat that would fix your problem by removing all content outside the crop. 
Yeah I've hacked lots of PDF files in AI. They use more than one clipping rect per page from memory. Correct, the artboards are defined in a single co-ord space it would seem — artboards are discretely and independently located on the document canvas and can even overlap each other. Yes those operations might work, I never though of that, I came across an Illustrator based solution early on in this thread. There's no conversion going on in Acrobat though I think, the file stays native PDF from AI to Acrobat and back to AI. As I've noted it's the way Acrobat displays or parses the data that in effect hides all the 'off-page' objects but open the same file in AI and it's all still there. 
You know, we can't read minds, you actually have to explain what it is you need.
I didn't know it, but I needed to get a confirmation on the artboardRange property bug in Illustrator CS4 and/or a confirmation that artboards are not treated as page objects, and I ended up having to lecture you on something you may have no interest in, sorry if I've been a pain. This is part of bigger bug elsewhere that I've been trying to get resolved or around on and off for a month. Every turn another bug, it gets confusing and frustrating at times