Ever need to make changes, but all you have is a PDF?
Hi, I'm Nigel French, and I'll walk you through a feature that can really save the day, converting a PDF to a fully editable InDesign document.
Imagine you've inherited a project.
The original InDesign file is lost, but your client needs changes.
If you've ever tried editing a PDF in Acrobat, you'll know how frustrating it can be to fix anything more than a simple typo.
But now you can open a PDF in InDesign, regardless of which app created the PDF.
You'll get an InDesign document that preserves the layout, and you can make any changes you need.
Is it perfect?
No, but it is a massive timesaver.
As you can see, the converted version looks almost identical to the original.
The Swatches panel includes the colors and gradients used, and you can edit these if you need to.
The Links panel shows the images extracted from the PDF.
They've been exported to a folder called InDesign PDF Assets in the Documents folder and are retained as linked assets.
There are Paragraph Styles and Character Styles.
It's even kept the auto numbering, so I can easily change the order of steps.
And while there aren't any in this document, the appearance of tables is also preserved.
So, what's different?
So, we can compare, I actually do have the original InDesign file.
Let's view the two documents side-by-side.
Style names are different, layers are not preserved, nor are object styles.
Hyphenation settings have changed, causing some overset text which I can quickly fix.
Text that was in a multi-column frame in the original, is now split into individual text frames.
If you need to, you can thread these stories together.
While this gives you a great starting point, you'll need to check the converted file carefully against the original PDF.
Once your edits are done, package the file.
That way the graphics are copied into a links folder alongside your InDesign document.
And that's how you can open and edit PDFs directly in InDesign.
When the original file is gone, this feature saves a lot of time and frustration.
It's much quicker to fix any minor issues and to recreate the file from scratch.
Thanks for watching.
