Opening a PDF into InDesign.

Hello, I'm new to InDesign and need help importing an existing PDF to modify. I tried following the instructions here: http://bim.wikispaces.com/file/view/How+to+Import+and+Edit+PDFs+in+Adobe+InDesign.pdf , but do not have the option of opening from "Place" -- The Place option in in gray still.
Help?

File > Place... is not available?
And you do understand that you cannot change the content of the PDF inside InDesign, right? You can scale or crop, but nothing else with a placed PDF.

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Opening a PDF in indesign

How can I open a PDF into indesign and still be able to make changes to the document. Indesign wasn't allowing me to save so I didn't know any other option other than exporting it as a PDF

Unless the PDF has been saved with the native ID data embedded, it will not be editable.
Mylenium

Acrobat 5 - Placing PDF into inDesign and Output to Colour Separations are Wrong

Acrobat 5 - Placing PDF into inDesign and Output to Colour Separations are Wrong
I have a 2 Page PDF file from my client which I have to have setup 2UP on 450x320 for Metal Plates for the Press.
I setup my page size in inDesign and Placed each page from the PDF file into the inDesign Document.
Because I need 4 Metal plates (CMYK) I had to check the Colour Seperations for the file by outputting it to a Postscript file with CMYK SEPS and then using Adobe Distiller to turn it into a PDF file for me to view the Seperations.
As I've shown in the screen shot below. The CYAN plate has boxes all around the images in the PDF file which will come out on a Metal Plate.
Compared to the Colour version of the Client's PDF they supplied me, there is no boxes around the images.
I know this is a error with dropping a PDF file into inDesign, outputting to a PS file and then Distilling it to the SEPS. I've had the same problem when I've opened a PDF file that has been distilled in Illustrator and the Artwork is sliced into pieces and uneditable.
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Im facing a similar kind of problem. I want to store and retrieve Office files, PDF and Jpegs into/from the database to view them on web in disconnected mode. Please reply as I cant find any help/documentation regarding saving BLOB data into files. I was able to store file data into BLOB, using DBMS_LOB package.
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How do I open a pdf in inDesign CC?

how do I open a pdf in inDesign CC?
Thanks!

Lulu_Malaysia wrote:
Why after so many years, Indesign still couldn't open an PDF????
I really need this function!
Hopefully Adobe couldn't solve this problem in future version!
PDFs are designed to be a FInal file format. They are never intended to be edited in anyway.
Adobe don't support this function for many reasons.
InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop or any other Adobe product is not a multi-purpose PDF editor and you shouldn't be opening a PDF in Illustrator or Photoshop unless that PDF was specifically made with those programs.
To open a PDF in InDesign you need specialist software as mentioned above.
The correct workflow is to edit the existing InDesign document.
If you don't have that original InDesign document, then you need to recreate it from the start.
If you don't want to do that - then you need to buy the software that Converts the PDF to InDesign.

What plugin do I need to open a PDF in InDesign?

What plugin do I need to open a PDF in InDesign? I have twice lost my changes in an InDesignfile but I have saved in in PDF form. I want to open it in InDesign but it says a plugin may be missing.

You can't OPEN a PDF file in InDesign. This has never been possible.
You can PLACE a PDF file. A placed PDF is treated as a graphic, you cannot edit it. If you choose Import Options, you can choose which page(s) of the PDF to place.

Place pdf into InDesign CS4 js

Hi, I have those lines of script that place the pdf into InDesign, but in the process new frame gets created in which the pdf is placed, and I need it to be placed into my existing frame. How could I do it:
    var myRectangle = myDoc.pages[0].rectangles[0];
    myPage = myDoc.pages[0];
    myPDFPage = myPage.place(File(myFile), [0,0])[0];
Thank you very much for your help.
Yulia

Yes, you are right, I am stuck for a different reason, it does places the second page.
What I think is going on, and maybe there is a better approach to it than the one I am going about it: when I have single page pdf for the 1st page and single page pdf for the 2nd page, my script first tries to upload 1st pdf as multi-page just in case there is only one pdf with both files. And for some reason it uploads single page pdf twice (into the second InDesign page as well when there is no second page in the 1st pdf [If I could avoid that all together would be great]). So my script verifies if the pdf uploaded into the 2nd page is 1st page of 1st pdf then it deletes it. And then it looks if there is a file for the second page, and uploads it. So my new challenge is that when it verifies what page of the pdf is uploaded into the 2nd page of InDesign after the 1st pdf upload, it just crashes, and it worked with the previous way of placing pdfs (the green line of the script).
The second my issue is that, as it places the files, it dis-attaches the frames from the master page, and I need them to be still half attached. For the same reason new frames created by place command - is a problem for me. Maybe easier way, if it's possible at all, half-attach those new frames to the Master page afterwords. (This is the main goal for me).
Here are both functions: to upload first pdf and second pdf:
function myPlacePDF(myDoc, myFile){
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pdfCrop = PDFCrop.cropMedia;
    // page 1
    myPage = myDoc.pages[0];
    var myRectangle = myDoc.pages[0].rectangles[0];
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = 1;
    myRectangle.place(myFile);
    //PDF.place (myFile);
    //myPDFPage = myPage.place(File(myFile), [0,0])[0];
    myRectangle.geometricBounds = [0, 0, myGB_Y2, myGB_X2];
    // page 2
    myPage = myDoc.pages[1];
    var myRectangle = myDoc.pages[1].rectangles[0];
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = 2;
    myPDFPage = myRectangle.place(myFile);
    //PDF.place (myFile);
    //myPDFPage = myPage.place(File(myFile), [0,0])[0];
    myRectangle.geometricBounds = [0, 0, myGB_Y2, myGB_X2];
    if (myPDFPage.pdfAttributes.pageNumber != 2){
        myPDFPage.parent.remove();
    try{
        var myFrame = myDoc.pages[0].rectangles[1];
        if (myFrame.isValid == true){
            myFrame.remove();
    catch (e){}
    try{
        var myFrame = myDoc.pages[1].rectangles[1];
        if (myFrame.isValid == true){
            myFrame.remove();
    catch (e){}
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = 1;
function myPlacePDFback(myDoc, myFile){
    var myFrame= myDoc.pages[1].rectangles.[0];
    if (myFrame.isValid == false){
        myDoc.pages[1].rectangles.add();
        myFrame.strokeWeight = 0;
        myFrame.geometricBounds = [0, 0, myGB_Y2, myGB_X2];
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pdfCrop = PDFCrop.cropMedia;
    myPage = myDoc.pages[1];
    var myRectangle = myDoc.pages[1].rectangles[0];
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = 2;
    myRectangle.place(myFile);
    //myPDFPage = myPage.place(File(myFile), [0,0])[0];
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = 1;
Kasyan, your script might be helpful, and I would like to look into it.
Thank you very much for your help.
Yulia

How do I import a .PDF into inDesign?

How do I import a .PDF into inDesign? Does anybody know how? I need to edit a book in inDesign that is a .PDF. So if anyone know how to do that please tell me.

Bob, Peter, grmg, many thanks for your very helpful comments. Delighted mac/pc not relevant. Will scratch that from list of herrings to chase.
Re PDFs - actually, I'm working in Acrobat (not just a finalized PDF), and Acrobat does of course allow editing of a sort; I'd concluded that since Adobe is willing to tolerate that degree of editing with its product, it should therefore tolerate moving its native format (*.pdf) into another of its own native formats (*.indd). I see that's a misconception.
This morning I tried all flavors I could find of getting my Acrobatted content into ID3, including copy/paste, place, and import (from the ID side); none was satisfactory. Output from Acrobat to Word and then placing Word was fine for English but destroyed the Greek - not just wrong font, but complete gobbledygook and loss of all diacriticals. Names of fonts don't matter for my purposes; the legibility of the English, and the legibility and tonic accuracy of the Greek do matter. Author of this project is not tech-savvy and is using old Greek system as well; nothing he or i can do to fix that.
Current plan is to request author to provide me his native files, which will be Mac files. Am I understanding the Import dialog and your collecitve comments to suggest that with that file resident on my PC (and unopened), I can use the Place dialog, with "Show Options" selected, to get the Mac file into ID?
Chapeaux to those of you with constructive comments - hugely appreciated.
YC

3D PDF into InDesign

I am trying to place a 3D PDF into Indesign but it just comes up as "Enable 3D view" What does that mean and what do I need to do differently?

InDesign's implementation of the PDFLib engine doesn't support 3D annotations or scripting.

Open .xml documents into InDesign?

Is there a way to open .xml documents into InDesign, or any Adobe program?
The goal is to access text from a web site feed and place it in an Indesign doc, to create a print product.

You can't open XML but you can certainly utilize it.
Here's a good book you might want to look into: http://amzn.to/i3iWZ5
Bob

Importing PDF into Indesign

Is it possible to import PDf documents into the current version of Adobe Indesign ? I am currently testing the software and was wondering if it would be possible to import around 50 of my already published PDF docs to work on it and redesign it with Indesign ?
Thank you in advance.

Hi @plummerdesign and @MasterStudios - indeed, it is a crying shame our website does not work in IE and they are looking into this. Thank you. We do not have a demo for several reasons and can understand your point. We do have numerous forms of detailed video demsontrations on PDF to InDesign via PDF2DTP here and we have some awesome testiominals from graphic arts industry experts, Frank Romano, Michael Jahn, Joe Marin and more (click on the hyper links on their names to view what they say about PDF2DTP).
One of many customer quotes we have include this:
"Really pleased to have this product [PDF2DTP for InDesign]. The Beta version was really good and saved me loads of hassle with amends to pdfs."
Graham Bell - http://www.absolutegraphics.co.uk
Another quote is:
“We have a lot of PDFs from „Word“ ;-) Before PDF2DTP, we used PitStop for the corrections, now we can do it better! As a recent example, we had come in an advert in PDF for a meeting. The ad was in RGB, Fonts not included, the trim and bleed were not correct, etc. I open it with the PDF2DTP plugin and it works very nice. A little bit of touching-up work on the pictures and the colours, but not much… Thanks for the app!”
Dirk Rosenplänter
Blueprint Werbeagentur e.K.
Hopefully this helps you see how useful and yet still affordable PDF2DTP for InDesign is. It is truly a gem, especially when all you have left is the said PDF! Thank you for the feedback and we will strive to better that side of it, for sure.

Place all pages in pdf into indesign

I want to place all pages in a pdf file into indesign, I mean need to load all pages in a pdf in single place method and place every pages individually on iterating through pages in indesign.
Note: Manually this can be done by enable "Show import option",which opens preference window in which we can prefer to ALL option under PAGES menu under GENERAL tab while preforming Place pdf.

You are finding PlaceMultipagePDF.jsx script and here is it for you
//PlaceMultipagePDF.jsx
//An InDesign CS3 JavaScript
//Places all of the pages of a multi-page PDF.
//For more on InDesign scripting, go to http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/xml_scripting.html
//or visit the InDesign Scripting User to User forum at http://www.adobeforums.com
//Display a standard Open File dialog box.
var myPDFFile = File.openDialog("Choose a PDF File");
if((myPDFFile != "")&&(myPDFFile != null)){
     var myDocument, myPage;
    if(app.documents.length != 0){
        myDocument, myNewDocument = myChooseDocument();
    else{
          myDocument = app.documents.add();
          myNewDocument = false;
    if(myNewDocument == false){
         myPage = myChoosePage(myDocument);
    else{
        myPage = myDocument.pages.item(0);
    myPlacePDF(myDocument, myPage, myPDFFile);
function myChooseDocument(){
    var myDocumentNames = new Array;
    myDocumentNames.push("New Document");
    //Get the names of the documents
    for(var myDocumentCounter = 0;myDocumentCounter < app.documents.length; myDocumentCounter++){
        myDocumentNames.push(app.documents.item(myDocumentCounter).name);
    var myChooseDocumentDialog = app.dialogs.add({name:"Choose a Document", canCancel:false});
    with(myChooseDocumentDialog.dialogColumns.add()){
        with(dialogRows.add()){
            with(dialogColumns.add()){
                staticTexts.add({staticLabel:"Place PDF in:"});
            with(dialogColumns.add()){
                var myChooseDocumentDropdown = dropdowns.add({stringList:myDocumentNames, selectedIndex:0});
     myChooseDocumentDialog.show();
    if(myChooseDocumentDropdown.selectedIndex == 0){
        myDocument = app.documents.add();
        myNewDocument = true;
    else{
         myDocument = app.documents.item(myChooseDocumentDropdown.selectedIndex-1);
        myNewDocument = false;
    myChooseDocumentDialog.destroy();
    return myDocument, myNewDocument;
function myChoosePage(myDocument){
    var myPageNames = new Array;
    //Get the names of the pages in the document
    for(var myCounter = 0; myCounter < myDocument.pages.length;myCounter++){
        myPageNames.push(myDocument.pages.item(myCounter).name);
    var myChoosePageDialog = app.dialogs.add({name:"Choose a Page", canCancel:false});
    with(myChoosePageDialog.dialogColumns.add()){
        with(dialogRows.add()){
            with(dialogColumns.add()){
                staticTexts.add({staticLabel:"Place PDF on:"});
            with(dialogColumns.add()){
                var myChoosePageDropdown = dropdowns.add({stringList:myPageNames, selectedIndex:0});
    myChoosePageDialog.show();
    var myPage = myDocument.pages.item(myChoosePageDropdown.selectedIndex);
    myChoosePageDialog.destroy();
    return myPage;
function myPlacePDF(myDocument, myPage, myPDFFile){
     var myPDFPage;
     app.pdfPlacePreferences.pdfCrop = PDFCrop.cropMedia;
     var myCounter = 1;
     var myBreak = false;
     while(myBreak == false){
          if(myCounter > 1){
               myPage = myDocument.pages.add(LocationOptions.after, myPage);
          app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = myCounter;
          myPDFPage = myPage.place(File(myPDFFile), [0,0])[0];
          if(myCounter == 1){
               var myFirstPage = myPDFPage.pdfAttributes.pageNumber;
          else{
               if(myPDFPage.pdfAttributes.pageNumber == myFirstPage){
                    myPage.remove();
                    myBreak = true;
          myCounter = myCounter + 1;
Shonky

How can I open a PDF into an iBooks folder other than PDF folder?

How can I open a PDF directly into a folder in iBooks other than the PDF folder? I have different folders made and am currently having to open into the PDF folder and then move to the correct folder. Can I open directly into the needed folder?

No, I don't think so. The pdf isn't capable of knowing which folder you would like it to open in – all it knows is that it is a pdf. It's up to you to put it in the appropariate folder.

Installed Acrobat Pro 9 - requires password to open any PDF & botches InDesign exports to PDF

Installed CS4 on my new Mac, using the downloaded installation file. Everything works except Acrobat. I uninstalled Acrobat & reinstalled it. Same problems remain:
1a. Everytime I open a PDF, I get this message: "Adobe Acrobat Pro wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this." I have to enter the username & password for my computer to open every PDF. Then they open correctly.
1b. If I open Acrobat from the Applications folder, without opening a file, I get the same message & must enter username & password to open Acrobat.
2. From InDesign, I export PDFs using File > Export. The PDFs have little rectangles for about half the text in the entire document. I routinely export both hi-res (Print Quality) and lo-res (Smallest File Size) PDFs in InDesign & this happens with all of them.
Most of the work I do results in PDFs. None of them have password protection or other security. I don't see anything in Preferences that looks like it would relate to these issues. Help, please!

Go the the Applications -> Utilities folder. In there you will find the Disk Utility app. When you run that application, you can select your hard drive. Then click on the Fix Permssions button.

Problem Importing a PDF into Indesign CC

We don't usually have this problem with InDesign CC, but this came at a very bad time and I'm not sure if it is a bug in InDesign CC or not. We were given a PDF from an auditor of a client to bring into their financial report. The strange thing is that we were only able to bring in pages on left pages, any page that was brought in on the right hand page did not show. In fact, if we copied a page that showed up on the left page and moved it to the right page, it would not show it.
Fortunately we still have CS6 and we were able to place the same PDF with no problem. So we had to save the document into a CS6 format and then insert the PDF.
I don't know what would have caused this, but we haven't had problems with other PDFs. It seems that there was something about that PDF that InDesign CC didn't like (but that CS6 was able to handle).
Any ideas?

I think we'd need to see samples from the actual .indd and PDF files to give you any real answers.

Open a pdf in indesign

Hi folks
its all in the title.
I got an invoice made in illustrator and saved into pdf
I cannot open it in indesign.
I got an error message
Any help pleasE?
Thank you

I represent Recosoft Corporation the creators of PDF2ID. PDF2ID converts PDF, Illustrator and WIndows XPS files to native editable InDesign files. Depending on your InDesign version there is PDF2ID v3.5 for InDesign CS4-CS6 support and PDF2ID v4.0 built specifically for InDesign Creative Cloud (or v9.0). I'm updating this post to mention that PDF2ID v4.0.1 was released in June 2014 which added support for ID CC 2014 (or ID v10.x onwards). This was a free release for v4.0 users from Recosoft.
Paul Chadha
Director of Engineering, Recosoft Corporation.

Opening a PDF into InDesign.

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