Converting a PDF into an Indesign doc.

[Guest]

Hello everybody,

Is it possible to convert a PDF into an Indesign File?  I am using Indesign CS5.5

Thanks in advance for the help!

QntaDesign

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

The best option is PDF2ID:

PDF2ID - Recosoft

[Guest]

That will let me open and save the document in Indesign?  How would I go about doing that?

Thanks,

QntaDesign

[Guest]

Oh I see, that is a software converter!  So I cannot do it any other way?  I cannot save the PDF as a different file that is compatible with Indesign so that I can just open it up in Indesign and save it?

[Petteri_Paananen]

No you can´t.

There´s couple of thing you can try, but I´m afraif none of them are quite perfect...

1) Open you PDF into Illustrator and copy/paste or drag&drop the content of the page into InDesign from there. Cons are; you can do only one page at the time and your text will be converted to outlines during the process

2) Save your PDF as RTF or Word document from Acrobat Professional and place resulting file to InDesign with File>Place commans. You probably have to redo most of the layout, but with correct settings you may be able to preserve text as editable mode and have some styles and graphic elements still after placing....

Steve´s suggestion is only deasent way to do that.

[ingeg92]

How can I fix my text after it has been converted to outlines?

[Peter Spier]

Use Acrobat's OCR on the PDF...

[RodneyA]

And, of course, if you don't need to EDIT the things in the PDF file, you can just place it on the page, and it will be identical in Indesign to the way it is in Acrobat. You can add material to it, and add more pages, but you can't change it.

[GraphixGeeker · Accepted solution]

The best solution to this is usingPDF2DTP for InDesign from Markzware. In my own experience, it has been fast and accurate on every conversion made.

[CWInc]

HEY ADOBE!  What about just making this conversion part of InDesign???  Indesign creates PDF so how about making the reverse possible?  Please??

[Steve Werner]

"Hey Adobe" doesn't live here. Product managers (who make the decisions) look here instead:

Adobe InDesign Feedback

[Derek Cross]

Also PDF is not owned by Adobe anymore.

[BobLevine]

Hey, how about putting an egg back in the shell after you make an omelet?

There are third party plugins that do this already with varying degrees of quality. I suspect Adobe doesn't want to do conversions of file formats unless they can be good all the time.

If you need it that bad, buy a plugin.

[Iman.Ahmed.educhamber]

But to be very honest with you, I am facing the same problem a lot and I prefer what mentioned before, to open the pdf in Adobe illustrator, then manually take it to Indesign.

Using plugins or other automatic ways may cause problems later.

It takes time I know, but easy way of conversion is also time consuming, it will be easy to convert but during the project you'll struggle with many strange and unknown errors.

I wish you a good luck

[BobLevine]

Sorry, but I can’t let that go.

Unless all you need is the content to repurpose, this is no way to work.

[Creamer Training · Accepted solution]

In Acrobat Pro, go to File>Properties menu and check the Description tab. If the document is "tagged" you will get better results with any conversion method. You can usually see what program/utility made the PDF too. Some create cleaner PDFs than others.

As mentioned, you can get conversion plugins from Markzware and Recosoft. I prefer the Marksware solution but both are similar.

You can export the PDF to Word and export the images; in some cases, you can grab tables and transfer to Excel. Then rebuild in in ID. The downside is the time lost in text clean up, graphic organization, and document rebuilding.

You can open each page in Adobe Illustrator (or similar program). The downside is the act of opening can change the document, create problems with fonts, and alter the ability to (easily) edit the text.

You can place the PDF page-by-page in ID and place text boxes filled with the background color to show new text.

A couple of notes:

If the PDF has protection against editing, you will need to remove it. I've used pdf-office.com utilities with good success.

If this is a reoccurring problem, my #1 rule in my Acrobat class is to "keep your original documents".