Layers in Acrobat

I have a pdf with 3 layers and when I open the pdf in Illustrator the layers disappear and it's converts to one layer, how do I import the pdf into Illustrator and retain my layers as shown in the pdf?
Vicky

Thanks for the email, I am really struggling to find an answer to this question:
I currently am using Acrobat 7.0 Professional and Illustrator CS2, the pdf has 3 layers and I'm trying to open the file in Illustrator and retain the layers, but when I open the file it converts to one layer. Do you know how to retain the layers when importing into Illustrator CS2?
The link you sent me has tons of pages to go through, can you think of a quicker was to get an answer? PLEASE
Vicky

Similar Messages

How to create a nested hierarchy of layers in Acrobat X

After researching on line for a few days it appears that AutoCAD 2012 64 bit no longer supports PDFMaker. In the old PDFMaker it would appear that I could select AutoCAD layers to make a layer groups or nested hierarchy. I want create something like the first page of this http://floridadisaster.org/publicmapping/HELP.pdf Multiple groups with nested sublayers to several levels. With no luck on the exporting end I wonder if there is an Adobe product that can do this. Illustrator creates the same structure and then only exports the top layer. InDesign doesn't allow for layer groups or nested layers unless it has the DTP plugin, but then it only exports the top level layers. Any ideas? I have yet to find a product other than ArcGIS which is overkill for just the creation of a layer/sublayer hiearchy and expensive.
Thanks,
Josh

Actually, the "tree" you see on the right panel isn't a layers tree at all. OCGs (aka "layers") in a PDF file are in a simple 1-level stack, but you can define groups of layers, which Acrobat displays using the tree style. While there's no grouping or ungrouping tool in the user interface in Acrobat, you can do it via JavaScript by writing arrays of arrays into the doc.OCGOrder object. To quote the Acrobat SDK:
The simplest order array is a flat array of OCG objects. In this case, the listed OCGs are displayed in the UI as a flat list in the same order. If a subarray is present in the order array and the first element of the array is a string, the string will be listed with the rest of the array nested underneath it. If the first element of the array is not a string, the entire array will appear nested underneath the OCG preceding the subarray.

Create layered Adobe Acrobat files from PSE 2.0?

This forum has been consistently very helpful to me, for which I am ever so grateful.
As a solution to the "global Awareness" and "global literacy" dilemma in public education, I have created an 8-volume print and digital content suite in PSE 2.0 (over a period of 12 years). Teachers are eager to get hold of it, but I am discovering that not that not all classroom teachers have direct access to Adobe Photoshop Elements. Is there a way to convert my PSE 2.0 files to layered Adobe Acrobat files without losing quality of the images?
[For low-res reference, see www.worldpeas.org and click on the .pdf button.] The .psd graphics files consist of large-format continental maps, layered with up to 200 postage stamp catalogue images. The stamp objects are moved to their correct places on the map, with the correct map number corresponding to the layer number. In the digital versions, users right click on the stamp image to see if they got the correct map position.
Any other suggestions?
Many thanks for reading this.

GloblaEd, I like your questions, they trigger my inquisitive nature!
Anyway, there is a multi-layer PSD World Map available* from http://snipahar.deviantart.com/art/Artistic-Map-Making-Template-318243114. This file makes use of layer groups, which is a full Photoshop feature. PSE can read layer groups and resave them but you cannot work with them other than hide, reorder, rename or delete them. For the purpose of this exercise though that's not important.
After unzipping the file from the above link, I opened it in PSE12 and saved it as a layered PDF file using the instructions I gave in Reply #2. The resultant PDF opens fine in both PSE12 and PS-CS6 with all layers intact, so I think things are looking good for what you want to do.
You can view or download the pdf I created from here - https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=F6CE9FE6B45F5496%21144
Incidentally the file has 346 layers, all of which were correctly saved by PSE12 into the PDF file and opened correctly in both PSE12 and full Photoshop (which is where the following screenshot is taken from). This should be a good test for you to determine if it can do what you want or not.
* You can get links to loads of public domain map image files by searching https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=world+map+psd+layerered.
Cheers,
Neale
Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children
If this post or another user's post resolves the original issue, please mark the posts as correct and/or helpful accordingly. This helps other users with similar trouble get answers to their questions quicker. Thanks.

Is it possible to put form fields on layers in Acrobat?

I am creating evaluation forms that have 3 layers. Basically, on page 1 there are 3 buttons for the apprpriate category, and each button turns on a specific layer. The following pages have information to be filled out based on which category layer is selected on page 1.
I've created the documents in Indesign with layers and so far exporting the document and layer buttons works fine . . . I just have to assign the layer action in Acrobat to the buttons. But, when it comes to creating the form fields, I can't figure out how to create them on a layer. When I go into form field editing I lose my layer panel and when I can see the layer panel, turning layers on and off does not affect the fields.
Is it possible to put fillable form fields on layers, so I could have different fields visible based on what layer is showing?

So, if I learn to create this script, can I have multiple sets of fields stacked on top of each other that can be shown/hidden along with the rest of the layer by pressing a button?
Hi,
you don't need to learn JavaScript for such basic actions, they are built-in.

Layers in acrobat not displaying layer names correctly in Mavericks...

As you can see, the titles of the layers are being cut off and are barely visible. Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem..? I've attached a screen shot. We think it might be a font issue? Any advise would be appreciated!

This seems to be a general bug in Acrobat on Mavericks. It was also reported to happen in the Bookmarks panel.
You should report it to Adobe here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
However, I'm not sure that your version (you selected acrobat_9 as a tag) is supported on Mavericks at all...

Controlling Layers and Acrobat X Pro

We are in the process of transitioning from Acrobat 9 Pro Extended to Acrobat X Pro. My current version of Acrobat 9 has a Right Hemisphere plugin that provides some useful templating features including nice buttons and text fields. The feature that I found most useful is the ability to specify which layer a given object (buttons, fields, etc) belongs to so that they can be shown or hidden based on which layers are made visible. I thought that this was built in feature of Acrobat 9 but it looks like it may just be a feature of the plugin. Does Acrobat X have this functionality? If not, is there a good work around for this?

Assigning buttons, rich media annotations, and other such objects to a layer is not a feature of Acrobat... in any version... though it is possible. The tool I use for this is the "OCG (Layers) Tool" from pdfscripting.com. You'll need to buy a membership to get it but it's well worth the price for this plug-in alone but there's lots of other great content in the member's area as well.
J-

Disable "open in layers" in Acrobat?

This is just a question, and probably a rookie problem: every single PDF file I download or save as a pdf in Photoshop or Illustrator, when I want to open it again, opens as "Layer 1" rather than as "Background". That means that in every case, if it's an image file that I want to open, examine and close, I have to flatten it first or it will save as a new PSD file rather than as a TIFF(default) or a PDF again. It seems odd to me that an application that doesn't really function in terms of layers, crams layers down my throat when I open its native file type-PDF. I work mainly in Illustrator and Photoshop; I'm not adept at Acrobat, so it's probably happening because I missed some setting or preference. Is this just a "trash the prefs" matter? Any help will be appreciated. I'm on a Mac Powermac G5 2GHz w/ 7GB RAM, running CS3 on OS X 10.5.6

Hey,
i found this link:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/differences-between-using-a-workbook-in-excel-and-excel-services-HA010105457.aspx
Here you can see a comparison between Excel workbook and excel services.
At the point: unsupported, you'll find the tag "tooltips"
I guess, it's not supported, sry...

Video and layers in Acrobat 9

Hello all.
When I use Acrobat 9 Pro Extended and I want add a pdf as a layer, and this pdf have a video in it, when I convert it in a layer the pdf imported is flattered so I only have the 'poster' of that video no the proper video. I would like to know if It's possible to preserve the original structure of the pdf imported when I convert it in a layer of the first pdf.
Thanks in advance.

Try right clicking on the T symbol in the tool box and choose Horizontal Type Mask Tool.
Then type your text and see if adding your layer style looks any better.

Can't move layers in Mac Acrobat 9 Pro

I can't move layers in Acrobat 9 Pro, even though Adobe says it's possible. All that I get is a circle wih a slash at the cursor on clicking and holding the mouse, indicating that moving the layer up or down in the stack is not possible. No key presses help either. Four attempts to get a definitive answer from Adobe Support yield only that they said it was possible. They also admitted that even if you did move a layer, it would not affect how the layer objects display, ie. whether above or below other layer's objects!
Has anyone been successful in moving a layer?
Relatedly, one (Windows) respondent says she can "position" a new layer upon Layer Import, but the Mac dialog makes no mention of the layer stack, just the X-Y coordinates on the PDF page....
Thanks for any help or thoughts,
fss

Thanks guys for responding. I went through the usual steps of trashing preferences, shutting down the computer, going home, and drinking a beer. I got in this morning and booted her up, and now everything works just as it should.
No idea what it was. I'm positive that the tracks weren't locked, and I'm 95% sure that I was in arrow mode (I was selecting the layer right before trying to move it.)
I don't know what it was, but I hope it never happens again.
Thanks again,
Nathan

Acrobat 9 and indesign CS4

I have been using layers in acrobat 9 pro to do some hide/show layers with javascript. The problem i ran into is that if i needed to update the pdf, i would loose the layers i had created in the pdf and/or the javascript. I could preserve the javascript by using 'replace' pages in acrobat but the layers would be lost.
I then decided to get indesign where i could create layers and then export them to the pdf, so every time i needed to redo the pdf, I didn't have to recreate the layers.
PROBLEM
If i create interactive buttons in indesign and then export them to a pdf, the pdf created is fine including interaction buttosn. However if i try to then update the original document by using 'replace' pages (this lets me keep the javascript), the buttons all disappear.
Below is the pdf from indesign which functions correctly with the buttons.
Below is the original pdf after i have imported the above using 'replace' pages. The buttons are still there and the mouse over works, but the images have disappeared including the prev/next arrows.
What gives adobe. I have checked and double checked all settings for the export including layers, hyperlinks, objects, embed, you name it but no joy.
Thanks to anyone with an answer.

This thread can be closed.
I had inadvertently tried to replace pages from an indesign created pdf into a non indesign created pdf and this created the problem.
Once i create the pdf from indesign and then add the javascript to the exported interactions in acrobat, i can replace pages with no problem once i continue to create them with indesign which exports the layers. This way my layers and javascript all stay intact and i can happily keep recreating the pdf without lots of work on the backend.
What acrobat does do is create a separate layer for the interactive buttons in the newly replaced document which i can then just merge into the page. which forms my background.
I hope this helps someone else.

I'm creating a layered pdf from CS3 v5.0.3 and my layered PDF always has

a layer called "Guides and Grids". This is not a layer in my InDesign file and doesn't contain any information in the PDF. I've done a few tests thinking that maybe my actual guides were somehow coming over on a new layer from my master page, but this layer appears even if I don't use a master page or have guides at all. Is there a way for me to prevent this layer from showing up in my PDF? I have been using the merge layer option in Acrobat to get rid of it. It happens no matter if I make the layered PDF with any of the layer options in InDesign (visible, etc . . .). Any suggestions?
Thanks

Layers will only appear in a PDF if you save with PDF with at least Acrobat 6 compatibility and turn on the Create Acrobat Layers option.
So I assume that you DO want your InDesign layers to appear in the PDF file, you just don't want the Guides and Grids layer to appear. It appears turned off so it wouldn't harm anything and wouldn't print out.
There is no way in the InDesign UI for this not to happen.
There's also no way to remove layers in Acrobat in the UI except as you're already doing it. It's possible that you could program that to happen in a more automatic way with Acrobat JavaScript.
I think you'll have to live with it.

How can I merge the layers ? (in C#)

Hi
I exported a map to PDF on ESRI ArcGIS Engine and found that there were more layers than I had expected.
And so I want to delete or merge some of the layers.
I found the way in Acrobat Pro Application, but cannot found the way in Acrbat SDK.
Could you let me know how to delete or merge the layers with Acrobat SDK (C#).

There are no C# APIs for that doing, only C/C++ APIs available to plugins

Hierarchy of layers

Help, I am looking for a script that would read the layer
names and hierarchy of layers in PS and Illy to recreate post
import into Fl. Currently the timeline view will not show full
hierarchy only the top level. And, I am not using any speical
effects or blends to my layers or groups only flat images or paths.
I am dealing with 200 layers! Manually recreating the layering
would be very time consuming. Thanks :-)

Actually, the "tree" you see on the right panel isn't a layers tree at all. OCGs (aka "layers") in a PDF file are in a simple 1-level stack, but you can define groups of layers, which Acrobat displays using the tree style. While there's no grouping or ungrouping tool in the user interface in Acrobat, you can do it via JavaScript by writing arrays of arrays into the doc.OCGOrder object. To quote the Acrobat SDK:
The simplest order array is a flat array of OCG objects. In this case, the listed OCGs are displayed in the UI as a flat list in the same order. If a subarray is present in the order array and the first element of the array is a string, the string will be listed with the rest of the array nested underneath it. If the first element of the array is not a string, the entire array will appear nested underneath the OCG preceding the subarray.

Dedicated Layers for each Page.

I would like to see dedicated layers for each page. As it is right now the layers span across every page. If you make a layer on the home page as say "home header" it shows up as a layer on say the contact page, where it is completely useless and can cause confusion and clutter. This is a basic example but often I have multiple layers on one page and only need one or two on a different page and find I'm getting them confused from one page to the next and causing unnecessary clutter and confusion. If each page had dedicated layers for its content then it would be much easier to stay organized and provide a better user experience and more effectiant updating of info for each page.

Daniel Flavin wrote:
It's not, and each time (yesterday in fact) I've thought how nifty it would be to use layers in this fashion, I've killed time. Layers are document wide. You're choice is to create a pdf with layers enabled for client reviews, but than I realized they wouldn't understand how to mainipulate layers in Acrobat, and I couldn't formulate less than a one hundred word tutorial.
It's possible to make buttons in InDesign that show/hide layers (and perform other actions like page navigation, etc.) in PDF documents. No user tutorials would be needed with informative text labels on the buttons.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Problems with grouped and merging layers

Sometimes when I combine layered .pdf files (by dragging pages in or doing Merge Files Into a Single PDF), the layers come in grouped (by file name) and other times they do not. Why is that? Also, is there a way to ungroup layers in Acrobat?
Any help is much appreciated!
For those interested in the background, I have a bunch of layered .pdf files that I want to combine. They were created from a single large Photoshop image sliced into page-sized pieces so the files all have the same layers and the layers are arranged and named the same in every file. I want the combined PDF book to maintain these layers so the user can, with one click, turn on or off a given layer across all pages of the PDF. Clicking on a layer on every page just isn't going to cut it.
I figured I would just combine all of the single PDF pages and then merge all of the layers of a given name so that I end up with just one layer for each type. The problem is that the merging works sometimes and not others. I can't figure out why, but it works far more often when the files combine without the layers grouped. It still doesn't work all of the time, but it NEVER works if the layers come in grouped - so I figure I would start there.
I'm using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. I used the method outlined below to turn my layered Photoshop (CS5) files in layered PDF files:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8296095_convert-photoshop-pdf-layers.html

After hours (and hours) of debugging Acrobat, I figured out that as long as the file(s) I drop in are not at the end of the document, then no layer groups are formed - all of the layers in both files are at the top level.
If I drop a file in after all existing pages, then the layers are grouped by file name.
and
If there are layer groups then merging fails. The names of the merged layers disappear from the layer list but the conent is left permanently visible.
If the layers are not divided into groups, then merging works most of the time. I haven't figure out why it occassionaly fails this way too, but so far it's been easy to work around.
This is Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 so no chance of it being fixed - so amybe this will help someone else in the same boat.

Layers in Acrobat

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