How can I paste a pdf of a Publisher document into Pages so I can edit?

Question

I have been asked to print a document that was created in Publisher on a PC. I have been sent a pdf of the document, which is A4, printed both sides, with four A6 text boxes on each side, with the same artwork and text in each box. The trouble is, the layout is wrong so when it is cut into four the margins are not even. I have Acrobat 7.0 Standard (which is know is very old) but I haven't used it much and can't work out how to edit the pdf. At the moment all I can do is copy and paste the entire document into Pages but then I can't extract just one A6 text box from the rest. If I could do that it would be a breeze to set it up correctly in Pages so that it works when cut into four A6 pieces. When I go to Get Info it says it is not locked and I have permission to read and write.
Can anyone explain these things to a beginner, please?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Chris
There are several ways we can go about this.
*1. In Adobe Illustrator* you can open the pdf file directly and chop out the bits you don't want and resave them individually. There maybe problems with fonts not being embedded as it comes from a PC where such things are mostly verbotten.
*2. In Acrobat* you can do some editing and avoid the fonts issue. But the procedure is a bit more involved.
If it helps, you need 2 things:
+Menu > Tools > Advanced Editing > Select Object Tool+ and
+Menu > Split Document… / Crop Pages…+
Using this you can unpick the pdf file removing the parts you don't want. Not as simple as it sounds because you need to understand why some objects select with others and why some are unselectable which has to do with grouping, masking and compounding.
*3. In Preview* cut apart the multiple pages and parts of each page. To split the multiple pages you will have to open the set and then delete the pages you don't want and save the remaining page with a new name.
To delete a page click on it in the sidebar and hit delete.
To crop a page use the +Select Tool+ in the top of the window and drag around the part of the page you want then +Menu > Tools > Crop+ and resave with a new name. Be aware this does not actually get rid of anything outside the select it just crops the view of it.
*4. Which brings us to Pages*. Having divided the pdf into individual page files you can then drag them into Shapes on your page the size of the parts you want to show.
When you click on the shape with page in it a little bar shows up underneath with +Edit Mask+. Click on the +Edit Mask+. You will see the shape, which is the mask, gets a grey dotted outline with white resizing boxes on the corners and mid points. If you need to adjust the crop or size of the shape drag on these.
Behind the shape outline is the image with the cropped parts outside shown greyed out. The greyed out part is the hidden part. If you click outside the shape but on the greyed out part of the image you select the image itself and can pull at its corners or sides to change its shape. Or if you just click on the greyed part of the image you can move it around so that it moves relative to the shape cropping it.
If you have several sections to be shown in each shape, you can move them one at a time to show each one. Say you have 4: 2 top and 2 bottom, option drag the shape with the picture in it to make 4 copies. Then in each one pull the image to reveal in turn top-left, top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right.
Do this till you have all the parts separated and rearrange them where you want.
*A bonus tip:* Cut out a step by opening Preview, next to Pages, with the multiple pages showing in the sidebar. You can drag the pages from the sidebar directly into the shape in Pages, without having to divide the .pdf.
Any further questions just ask.
Peter