Placing & scaling a multi-page PDF in InDesign?

I need to place a 300+ page PDF that is 8 1/2 x 11 into an InDesign doc that is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, and have the PDF pages scale proportionately to the smaller size.….can anyone help? In the "Place" command there is no option for this; yes, I can import then scale the pages one at a time but to have to do that 300+ times is simply ridiculous. There is what seems to be a great script here:
http://indesignsecrets.com/placing-all-the-pages-of-a-pdf-inside-indesign.php/comment-page -3#comment-494840
however, there is no way I can figure out how to get to the dialog pictured in the article. All I can do is right click on the script itself and tell it to run, but it doesn't bring up that snazzy little dialog box.......Am I missing something? Is there a particular folder inside the Scripts folder where I must place this script? And then is there some specific menu I must go to to bring up that dialog box?
Many thanks in advance!

Use the updated version, which you'll find at InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Zanelli Releases MultiPageImporter for Importing both PDF and INDD Files
If you don't see the dialog, odds are that you didn't actually install the script into ID. For that, see How to install scripts in InDesign | InDesignSecrets

Similar Messages

How do I import multi-page PDFs into an indesign document?

Note: When I search for answers to this question on the adobe site, i encounter a broken link.
I need to insert several multi-page PDFs such that they become one document that I am able to appy consistent control over. Should I be doing this in indesign? What is the best way to do this?

If you don't want to use them in InDesign for any other purpose than to assamble them in one new PDF I would rather use Adobe Acrobat Pro than InDesign.
In Acrobat Pro: Create new Deocument > Form multiple Files, select further what you need.

Placing multi-page PDF's

Maybe this question has already been posted but I could,t find it, so:
You can place a pdf in keynote, but is possible to select another page than the first one from a multi-page pdf.
That would really simplify the proces of putting together a presentation...

Yes, I can imagine that some interface that would allow you to set different pages WITHIN the app would be cool. To place an image that you can change without changing it's connected attributes,
1) Drag in an image
2) Mask the image
3) Do Format -> Advanced -> Define Media Placeholder
Then, you can copy/paste the action from one slide to another and replace the image as you need to without having to re-set all the animation.
Finally, feedback for Keynote is here. http://www.apple.com/feedback/keynote.html

Import multi-page PDF

Hello,
Does anyone know how to import a multi-page PDF document into Pages? For example, I only need the 4th and 5th page in a PDF document, or I need all 20 pages, or....
Seems like only the first page gets imported. It's incredible that inDesign and Quark (and PowerPoint?) have had this capability for years and years but it's left out of the Pages 09?!?!
-j

I only need the 4th and 5th page in a PDF document, or I need all 20 pages, or....
The principle of the thing is that PDF is a page description model, that is, it is an object oriented and non-revisable format and not a revisable format such as DOC.
In a revisable format such as DOC one can cut from the middle of page 19 to the middle of page 25 in one revisable file and paste that into the middle of page 3 in another revisable file.
If a non-revisable object oriented format such as PDF is to be placed as a page object in a revisable format, then the revisable format has to have a way to deal with this.
It does this by means of the box-geometry in the portable document format and different applications support different box-geometries - mediabox, artbox, cropbox and so forth.
Part of the problem with this is that people tend to confuse a non-revisable page description with a revisable file format, and part of the problem is that when a non-revisable object oriented page description is to be placed in a revisable file format, the importing application has to arrive at an assumption about what to do, and it's easiest to do this page by page.
Note that it is a known problem that if a PDF which is searchable is placed into a revisable file and that revisable file is saved out as a PDF with the first PDF nested inside, the first PDF may be partly or wholly unsearchable. In other words, Unicode imaging may not work, or may not work well.
/hh

Importing Multi-Page PDF. Problems with Image Size Changing.

I am working with CS4 on Windows XP.
This has happened to numerous files...
I open a multi-page PDF using PhotoShop using Grayscale. There are crop marks indicated on each page, so I will use the crop tool to crop each image accordingly. Then I convert each to a bitmap and save it as a .tiff file and close it. When I re-open the file, the image size has increased. It seems like it increases the same amount each time (maybe about 25%??) for each file.
Any suggestions on how to fix this are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I'm still unclear why you are bothering to open these PDF in Photoshop only to crop.
Acrobat can do this most easily. Placing the PDF files back in InDesign can also do this.
Photoshop is the last tool you'd want to use as it is rasterizing the vector elements/text and producing a larger file.
If you have neither Acrobat or InDesign, look to a free tool to crop PDF.

Slow Illustrator Multi-Page PDF Export + Alternative Solutions

Hello everyone,
I have a recurring job that requires 50-60+ small illustrations be placed into a few different layouts. The workflow I have set up right now is as follows: All of the illustrations are drawn in one Illustrator file with multiple page tiles. This file is exported as a multi-page PDF and placed in InDesign layouts. One main problem with this system is that it takes a long time to export 60+ page tiles from Illustrator.
I'm totally open to any alternative workflow solutions or recommendations someone might suggest, but there are a few reasons why I've chosen the multi-page PDF approach. The Illustrations share global swatches and symbols and graphic styles and sometimes these items need to be tweaked. Editing everything in one file is faster than opening, changing, and saving 50-60 individual Illustrator files. My client often needs me to make alterations to the illustrations, and sometimes these Illustrations appear on more than one page and in different layouts. Using the one multi-page PDF helps everything stay nice and consistent across every layout and every page.
If anyone has any suggestions for how to speed up the Illustration export or alternative workflow recommendations, I'd love to discuss them.
Thanks!

As Scott said, the multiple artboards in CS4 are the most efficient way to do that and upgrading sure will help to streamline your workflow. Your problem is that each element needs to be stripped, possibly flattened and other data removed when creating the PDF and that can take its toll. The only other way to do it IMO would be some script that takes each layer of your doc and converts it to an individual AI file or PDF. It may just not have any advantage at all - scripts can be slow if a lot is goingon and it still would take time to save and convert the files.
Mylenium

Acrobat Pro 9 Multi-page PDF Printing backwards thumbnails

Any time I create a multi-page PDF and ask it to print, it will print the first page correctly and then print every subsequent page as a mirror image thumbnail in the corner of the paper. If I print each page individually it prints fine. After doing a fair bit of testing, I've found the following:
If I de-select the option "choose paper source by pdf page size" this issue does not happen. Unfortunately, this means any multi-page PDF with 8x11 and 11x17 doesn't print the 11x17 pages properly as it just prints them on 8x11 paper.
If I select "print as image" this issue does not happen. Unfortunately, this is unacceptable due to the blurring of lines and text that occurs when selecting this option.
I haven't tested the various page scaling options because I am producing scaled maps, and must therefore leave it set to "none".
Does anyone know what might be causing this, and how to resolve the issue? Printing 10-20 page documents one sheet at a time isn't exactly an ideal solution.

Unfortunately, not only does this not solve the problem with multi-page-size documents, but it's begun happening on files which are all one size as well, where that box isn't even checked.
It appears that what's happening is the newer versions of Adobe Acrobat don't play nicely with emulated postscript support past a certain date. We're replacing our Canon with a newer model that has actual postscript support, and if that resolves the issue I'll be certain to post confirmation here. Copies of Adobe Acrobat 7 and 8 in our office haven't seen this problem at all; it's simply everyone who has upgraded past that point that can't print reliably.
More news next week, after we get the new copier.

Place multi-page pdf and resize pages automatically

Hi everyone,
I have an A4 sized multi-page pdf file and I wanted to place the pages of the pdf into a US letter sized Indesign document. I planned to use the placemultipagepdf.jsx script that comes with indesign, to do this. When I place the pages though, they come in as A4 and I have to adjust the size manually within each image box. Is there a way to have them place but then resize automatically to the US letter sized height?
Appreciate any help.

Use this one: InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Zanelli Releases MultiPageImporter for Importing both PDF and INDD Files

How to display a linked multi-page pdf?

I am a DW newbie building a small website for my book design business. I would like to show book design samples as spreads in a multi-page pdf (set up with page display set to two-up) linked to thumbnail images on a web page. I have created the links, but the pdf either opens in another window as single page, or (in Firefox) triggers a dialog box which asks to either dowload or open in Acrobat. Is the display of pdfs always dictated by the client browser settings or is there a DW behavior or widget that can accomplish this? Any other ideas on how best to display these samples? DW CS5.5, Mac OS 10.6.8.

Thanks for your reply. I think I have what I need now: I can export pdfs out of InDesign as spreads, and then the pdf reader in the browser sees that spread in the linked pdf as a single page. Should have thought of that sooner. Would be nice if there was some way to control the display of linked pdfs with code rather than be at the mercy of the client browser.

Multi-page pdf not linking properly

I have a 6-page interactive indd template that I have been using for months without any issues (well, not these at least), but recently it has been not linking multi page pdfs properly. The pdf that I use is always saved from illustrator cs6 and correlates page to page with the indesign file; page 1 in the pdf links with page 1 in the indd and so on... The issue I am having is that almost every other time I link the file up it behaves differently. Sometimes it will link one page of the pdf to all of the pages of the indd while showing that they are linked to different pages, other times it will not show up at all on the pages, but will show that it is linked in the links panel. Sometimes it will only link one of the pages up and leave the other 5 blank or it will link the pages up with some sort of transparency...
Now, I am not sure if this is a problem with Illustrator or Indesign because of another symptom: Sometimes when I save the file as a pdf it saves as if it is not a multi-page pdf with different content on every page, but rather a multi-page pdf with every page being a zoomed-out view of all of the artboards together but with only some of the content showing (only artboard 3 and 4, only artboard 6 and half of 1) when it is opened in acrobat. Also, sometimes the pdf when viewed in acrobat looks perfect, but when linked it only does a few of the pages in indesign.
Long story short, this doesn't make any sense... I know this is hard to follow and I don't understand why or how it is happening because it seems that every time has a different issue.
I know that you'll probably have questions and I’ll do my best to answer them, but I'm afraid that uploading files for samples won't work because there appears to be nothing wrong with the files themselves... just the links and/or export.
Win7, CS6 , 12 gigs RAM, i5

I have been using this method successfully for quite some time with these exact files, only in the last few days has this problem shown up.
When I originally made the template in indesign, I imported the pdf, showed import options, and linked the pages to the same page number in the pdf. 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc. My original thought was that this setting had been lost, so deleted the linked pdf and imported it again to try to get the 1 to 1 link. However, that did not change anything and I noticed that the page that shows up by itself in the pdf is almost always page 2, not page 1. If the page-to-page connection had been lost, all of the pages in indesign would be linking to page 1 as is the default behavior for linked pdfs.
Also, I thought that the save issue would be on the illustrator side too, so I tried resaving it but that didn't work either. The only way that I can get the file to work is if I remake it completely and save over the old file.
Now, I know that you're most likely thinking that this is an illustrator issue, but I don't think that it is one or the other, but rather both of them. The screenshots that I attached above are not the only way this error manifests itself. Sometimes the pdf looks right in acrobat, but once it is linked it displays with a transparency, shows only a few of the pages, or shows none at all.
I'm probably going in circles here, but I cannot figure out which program is the cause of the error or if there are two different issues that are happening at the same time.

Step and repeat multi page pdf

so im still failry new to indesign.
im running cs5.5 and im trying to imposition a multi page pdf
it is a 110 page pdf and what i would like to do is place it( for example) 8up step and repeat
what i would like is 110 sra3 sheets with each sheet having 8 copies of 1 page per sheet (sheet size fits fine)
is there a way to automate this im to poor for quite atm and i cant manage to get it to work using rhimposition.
i could use the pace multi page and then go through step and repeat on each page but but but 110 pages

Another possibility is to run Scott Zanelli's script eight times, changing the position each time. You'll find the script at InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Zanelli Releases MultiPageImporter for Importing both PDF and INDD Files

Getting Page Count for a Multi-Page PDF file using Illustrator script?

Does anyone know how to get the page count of a multi page PDF file? I know you can then open each page using the PDFFileOptions (pagetoopen). But I need to know up front how many pages there are to loop thru to open each page and process each page.
Any Ideas?

This script i did for photoshop:
OK so lets do it working on WIN and MAC without any shell script.
This solution is not the best but its working.
I used Try catch to solve it.
Only issue is that you should at least somehow know how many pages you expect in pdf.. this mean if you are working with books or flyers...
Then set the maxPagesCount to that number.
I am working with pdfs with max 20pages.. so i start open the 20 then 19 then 18 and when i am success i know the amount of pages.
Its not the quicker way but its usable.
var maxPagesCount = 20;
var actPagesCount = maxPagesCount;
var opts1 = new PDFOpenOptions();
opts1.usePageNumber = true;
opts1.antiAlias = true;
opts1.bitsPerChannel = BitsPerChannelType.EIGHT;
opts1.resolution = 10; //it will load faster the test page
opts1.suppressWarnings = true;
opts1.cropPage = CropToType.MEDIABOX;
myFunction = function () {
try {
      app.displayDialogs = DialogModes.NO;
      var fileList = openDialog();
      for (i = 0; i < fileList.length; i++) {
        actPagesCount = maxPagesCount;
        getPagesCount(fileList[i],maxPagesCount);
        alert(actPagesCount);
} catch (exception) {
    alert(exception);
getPagesCount = function (checkFile, lastPageID) {
try {
    for (var checkPage = lastPageID; checkPage > 0; checkPage--) {
      opts1.page = checkPage;
      var docRef = open(checkFile, opts1, false);
      docRef.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
      actPagesCount = lastPageID;
      return;
      checkPage=0;
} catch (exception) {
    // Look for next page
    checkPage--;
    getPagesCount(checkFile,checkPage);

Creating Multi-Page PDF from a Layerd Illustrator file (script)

Often times when designing a logo I create different versions and variable options on layers. This can result in several layers in one Illustrator file. Is there an easy way or an existing script that will allow me to (with one click) create a multi-page PDF consisting of all the layers within my .ai file? The current method is turning on each layer, performing a save-as (PDF), then turning off said layer and turning on the next layer and repeating the task and so-on-and-so-forth, etc … It becomes tedious and quite often I save over the previous version, forgetting to re-name it or forget to perform a save on a certain layer. Can anyone help with some advice? I have never written my own script before but am not opposed to trying, where do I begin?
Any help is appreciated.

You don't say what OS you are using and which scripting language you are thinking of doing this in…
This is a sample that may get you started done in JavaScript so it's platform independent with the exception of my 'mac style' file paths.
If your on a PC it may just be a typo to set to C drive or whatever you call them things…
If you are on the mac OS then it should just dump a load of PDF's on your desktop.
You say about a multi-page PDF but don't think Illustrator can do this unless its been added with multi-artboards in CS4?
Others would have to let you know that…
#target illustrator
var docRef = app.activeDocument;
with (docRef) {
var docName = baseName(name)
var pdfOptions = new PDFSaveOptions();
pdfOptions.pDFPreset = '[High Quality Print]';
// Turn all layers off
for (var i = 0; i < layers.length; i++) {
layers[i].visible = false;
// Turn each layer on
for (var i = 0; i < layers.length; i++) {
if (i == 0) {
layers[i].visible = true;
redraw();
var layerName = layers[i].name;
var saveAsPath = new File('~/Desktop/' + docName + '_' + layerName + '.pdf')
saveAs(saveAsPath, pdfOptions);
} else {
layers[i-1].visible = false;
layers[i].visible = true;
redraw();
var layerName = layers[i].name;
var saveAsPath = new File('~/Desktop/' + docName + '_' + layerName + '.pdf')
saveAs(saveAsPath, pdfOptions);
//close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
function baseName(fileName) {
var nameString = '';
var extOffset = fileName.lastIndexOf('.');
if (extOffset == -1) {
nameString = fileName;
} else {
nameString = fileName.substr(0, extOffset);
return nameString;

How can you create a multi-page pdf document in photoshop elements 13?

I previously had pse 11 and was able to create multi-page documents as pse files. However, pse 13 does not allow. How can I create multi-page pdf files from pse 13?

Alas, for one of those mysterious adobe reasons, it's gone in recent versions. Only multipage file you can make is a photobook.

Unable to mark the box 'create Multi-page PDF from page tiles' when saving to pdf-file

I am running Illustrator CS3 on a Mac OSX 10.5.8
I want to print a very large illustrator-file (1000 mm x 900 mm) across mutliple pages of A4-paper (5 x 5 sheets of A4-paper) by saving the file as a multi-page pdf file.
I first followed the instructions provided here:
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/create-mutli-page-pdf-illustrator.html
When I then tried to save the file: -> File -> Save as -> 'choose .pdf from drop-down menu'
I get to this menu:
I am unable to mark the box that says: 'Create multi-page pdf from page tiles'. I have made a red arrow pointing to the box I want to mark.
I have tried changing the other drop-down menus inside this menu, to see if the box I want to mark could become available, but without any luck.
I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I would be grateful if anyone could help me set my settings right to allow me to create such a multi-page pdf-file.
Thanks in advance for your help

Your ps file should be good, the problem likely resides elswehere. Maybe in your acrobat install, distillers settings. what error did distiller give?
Mine ran good and got a multi page document, here is a screenshot to help you troubleshoot.
On mac go to system preferences / print and fax / and change your default printer if you have another option. I know sounds like this should not help, but there are problems like Illustrator for example not making .pdfs if you do not have a printer chosen or an old or corrupt .ppd assigned.

Placing & scaling a multi-page PDF in InDesign?

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