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    Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue

    Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

      Hi everyone...

       

      My issue is that Acrobat won't or can't convert InDesign CS5 files. It opens Illustrator and Photoshop and converts them to pdf's but not InDesign.

      I've tried everything. I've even tried Adobe tech help. No luck. It was a relatively easy procedure in CS4, not to mention a time saver.

       

      Is there someone that knows how to resolve this? Please help as I'm desperate to avoid having to convert all my InDesign files one at a time.

        • 1. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
          Stix Hart Community Member

          What OS are you on and what version of Acrobat?  Have you tried updating Acrobat?

          • 2. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
            Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

            Stix...

             

            I have the latest Acrobat, latest Mac OSX, latest Mac.

            Are you experiencing the same issue?

             

             

             

             

             

            Many Thanks...

            Nicholas Petropoulos

            • 3. Re: Acrobat 9 won't open InDesign CS5
              Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

              Hi everyone...

               

              The issue with Acrobat 9 not converting InDesign CS5 files is perplexing. CS4 InDesign and Acrobat 8 work in harmony but unfortunately back saving a CS5 file, saving it as a CS4 file and attempting to open it in Acrobat 8 or 9 is of no use either.

               

              I'm at a loss as I can't understand why this is happening.

              • 4. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                Joel Cherney Community Member

                Please help as I'm desperate to avoid having to convert all my InDesign files one at a time.

                You know, I didn't even know that you could Open INDDs with Acrobat.Sorry, I don't have a fix for you (I assume that this would require Acrobat devs and InDesign devs to communicate with one another), but I can think of a workaround:

                 

                I'd assume that using the Export function in ID would be superior to opening with Acrobat, which I'd guess would be just like using Distiller. I know that automating the process of "Export all the INDDs in this folder as PDF with thus-and-so export preset" is not hard in Javascript. I can write the whole thing almost by myself! So it can't be that hard.

                • 5. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                  Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                  Joel.

                   

                  You're not the first that's surprised that you could open files in Acrobat. It is a time saver if you have multiple files to convert to pdf.

                  Thanks for your thoughts though.

                   

                  Do you think it's possible to create a 'service' or script that could do the converting in the background thus avoiding the tedium of creating pdf files one a time in InDesign?

                   

                   

                   

                   

                  Many Thanks...

                  Nicholas Petropoulos

                  • 6. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                    Larry G. Schneider CommunityMVP

                    The only AI you can open directly in Acrobat has been saved with PDF Compatability when saved in AI. This embeds a whole other file as a PDF which is what is used by Acrobat. If you don't do this the following is what you get.

                     

                    Picture 1.png

                    • 7. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                      Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                      Larry...

                       

                      Ai, Illustrator CS5 files are no problem. They convert seamlessly in Acrobat 9.

                      The message you get when attempting the conversion from InDesign is as follows:

                       

                      Could not find the application that created this file:

                       

                      /Volumes/TeraByte/TeraByte/ ƒ/713 WS_Promotional Brochure ƒ/Untitled-1.indd

                       

                      Please select a file created by an application that resides on your computer.

                       

                       

                       

                       

                      Many Thanks...

                      Nicholas Petropoulos

                      • 8. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                        Joel Cherney Community Member

                        Well, I don't know of a way to do it in the style of a service with a watch folder (outside of ye olde printing-Postscript-and-spitting-into-Distiller-watched-folder), but I know it's scriptable. The only way I know how to do it is to run the script with all ID docs closed, and all INDDs to be processed in a folder, and I just point the script at the folder. I'll post it if you're interested (but I don't have access to it at the moment, so it may be a day or two.)

                        • 9. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                          Joel Cherney Community Member

                          I bet that this is your problem:

                           

                          /Volumes/TeraByte/TeraByte/ ƒ/713 WS_Promotional Brochure ƒ/Untitled-1.indd

                           

                          What do you think about this?

                          / ƒ/

                          That glyph looks like an OS-level encoding problem to me. Perhaps you're on a Mac but accessing a Windows NAS? THere's more than one thread about common issues with CS5 in that circumstance.

                          • 10. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                            Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                            Joel.

                             

                            I've got to be honest and say I don't know what a glyph is.

                            I sincerely hope it's not a Mac thing as we are all  painfully aware, Adobe and Apple are not exactly getting along these days.

                             

                             

                             

                             

                            Many Thanks...

                            Nicholas Petropoulos

                            • 11. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                              Joel Cherney Community Member

                              I just said "glyph" because it's more general than "letter," and not  everyone thinks of the delta (that triangle) as a "letter."

                               

                              I'm 99% sure that this is a Mac vs. Adobe problem. If you want the technical details (I'm guessing "no") then I can post links to the threads here that discuss this matter. It might be best if you ask me for those links, and then send them on to whomever is in charge of maintaining your network drive, because the details will only be relevant to someone who is administering what I assume must be a bunch of Macs on a Windows network.

                               

                              But, really, do you have a directory named " ƒ"? I'm sure that you don't, and that this is your problem.

                              • 12. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                Thanks Joel.

                                 

                                I don't have a directory named delta and only the one hard disk. Why it doesn't recognise InDesign but does with the other Creative Suite is perplexing.

                                I can't believe it to be a Mac thing as I have contacted Apple Care and they don't know anything about it. It must be an Acrobat issue as it clearly states in it's pull down menus that it supports InDesign and of-course, we could always do it in the previous version. I'm not holding my breath any longer as I've got to get this project out this week. It's one at a time I'm afraid.

                                 

                                Ps. The irony is that early adopters such as myself are inevitably going to do the hard work for the ones that follow.

                                 

                                 

                                 

                                 

                                Many Thanks...

                                Nicholas Petropoulos

                                • 13. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                  Joel Cherney Community Member
                                  Ps. The irony is that early adopters such as myself are inevitably going to do the hard work for the ones that follow

                                  That's why I've been posting "Why in the world are you using CS5 for important work when there hasn't yet been a single update or bugfix?" in all of the CS5 threads.

                                   

                                  It didn't even occur to me that the path you posted was on your own local hard drive. It may be time for you to file a bug report for Acrobat, and maybe InDesign as well. It might also be helpful to post your problem, along with the file path, in one of the Acrobat forums (but I've not had much luck with that, as the signal-to-noise ratio over there isn't nearly as good as it is here in the ID forum ).

                                   

                                  Does the path you posted really look like this on your computer in the error message? I've drawn red boxes around the parts that I think are the problem:

                                  path.png

                                  • 14. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                    Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                    Joel...

                                     

                                    I've spent the better part of three hours with Adobe over the phone. The tech's didn't know what the f#@k was going on. They even went as far and remotely accessed my Mac and are still clueless.

                                    The response from the 'master' tech was that Adobe has 'forgotten' to add the postscript plug-in or whatever in Acrobat 9.0.

                                    Incidentally, my understanding was that the forum you and I are communicating on is Adobe. Is it not?

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                    Many Thanks...

                                    Nicholas Petropoulos

                                    • 15. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                      Joel Cherney Community Member

                                      Well, yeah, the forum is hosted by Adobe, and is certainly part of the Adobe website. However, I'm not an Adobe employee at all. There are only one or two employees who post with any regularity in these forums; all the rest of us are users.

                                      I've spent the better part of three hours with Adobe over the phone. The tech's didn't know what the f#@k was going on. They even went as far and remotely accessed my Mac and are still clueless.

                                      The response from the 'master' tech was that Adobe has 'forgotten' to add the postscript plug-in or whatever in Acrobat 9.0.

                                      Yeah, the front-line first level support at Adobe leaves something to be desired (i.e., skill). It sounds to me like your "master tech" might be claiming that some part of Acrobat didn't install correctly. I guess that the annoyance of a complete uninstall and reinstall might fix your problem. If you want to try that, or are desperate, Google for "CS5 clean script" to make sure that you delete everything missed by the uninstaller program.

                                      • 16. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                        Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                        Joel...

                                         

                                        FYI, I took the liberty and contacted some of my colleagues in the industry and they were unable to convert an InDesign file in Acrobat 9.0 as well.

                                        Admittedly, on Macs as well.

                                         

                                         

                                         

                                         

                                        Many Thanks...

                                        Nicholas Petropoulos

                                        • 17. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                          Joel Cherney Community Member

                                          Unfortunately, my Mac is too old to test this issue perfectly - there's no way it could run CS5. However, I first tried to drop a CS4 INDD into Acrobat 9, which PDFed perfectly. Then I tried a bunch - and it worked a treat, thanks for showing me this technique!

                                           

                                          Then, I resaved one of the CS4 INDDs in CS5, and dropped it into Acrobat 9. No dice - I get a different error, first a dialog with only the word "open," and then another dialog claiming that the file was corrupted. So, it's certainly time for a bug report - I'm off to file one right now.

                                          • 18. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                            Joel Cherney Community Member

                                            I neglected to mention that I'm doing all of this testing on Win7, so it's a cross-platform issue.


                                            • 19. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                              Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                              Joel...

                                               

                                              It's the first time in nearly twenty years I've had an issue with Adobe that needed 'tech' support.

                                              For the record, I think they have fabulous software and have made my career in design extremely successful and rewarding.

                                               

                                              Ps. Perhaps they could relocate some of their 'Evangelists' to the sub continent for some re-training.

                                               

                                               

                                               

                                               

                                              Many Thanks...

                                              Nicholas Petropoulos

                                              • 20. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                Dov Isaacs Employee Hosts

                                                Yes, there is a problem with this particular feature in Acrobat.

                                                 

                                                To be very clear, Acrobat never opens any Illustrator or InDesign file itself to produce PDF nor does it go the PostScript route. Based on the file type, it tries to find the application and then silently opens the designated document with that application with instructions to export PDF per the joboptions specified in the Acrobat preferences (CTRL-K).

                                                 

                                                I suspect that InDesign 7 somehow identifies itself in a manner that is incompatible with Acrobat 9.

                                                 

                                                I'll pass it along to my friends in the InDesign support organization (not the outsourced guys) to investigate and comment upon.

                                                 

                                                The good news is that you still can produce PDF from InDesign by directly opening your InDesign documents explicitly in InDesign and exporting.

                                                 

                                                Ironically, the belief within Adobe is that this feature is one of the least used features of Acrobat and there consideration of removing it in the future. Thoughts?

                                                 

                                                          - Dov

                                                • 21. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                  Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                                  Dov...

                                                   

                                                  Thank you for your research. To be fair, I mostly export pdf's directly through InDesign HOWEVER, when I have a large quantity of High Resolution graphics of multiple pages to export, the tedium in doing it one at a time, or more recently, in the background (which incidentally, slows the pace considerably even though I'm using a MacPro Duo Quad Core with 16mg Ram) is mind boggling taxing. Therefore, the opportunity of doing a batch save in Acrobat over night is a wonderful tool, although from my recent adventures, mostly not known.

                                                   

                                                  Adobe could do worse than drop this feature though. One that springs to mind is to play a Mexican standoff with Steve Jobs over Flash. I find it ridiculous considering the implications of the majority of us who do interactive and web projects. PLEASE, let's get them to open source it so we don't have to learn yet another *******' language.

                                                   

                                                   

                                                   

                                                  Many Thanks...

                                                  Nicholas Petropoulos

                                                  • 22. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                    Dov Isaacs Employee Hosts

                                                    Exactly what do you want open-sourced?

                                                     

                                                    With regards to Flash and Saint Steve of Cupertino, there is no game that Adobe is playing here or nothing that we are somehow holding back from Apple. Simply stated, the issue over Flash is not really technical but rather one of "where do you put and who controls the toll booth?" That is evidenced by the fact that Apple put language in their developer license that not only prohibits Flash, but any application derived from a conversion of Flash into a native iOS application. Sorry, not much we can do about that.

                                                     

                                                              - Dov

                                                    • 23. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                      Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                                      Dov...

                                                       

                                                      My understanding from reading Job's thoughts is that his main concern was the propriety aspect of Flash, have I misunderstood the ramblings of a Saint or is there something sinister going on in Cupertino?

                                                       

                                                       

                                                       

                                                      Many Thanks...

                                                      Nicholas Petropoulos

                                                      • 24. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                        Dov Isaacs Employee Hosts

                                                        The issue has absolutely nothing to do with proprietary. Otherwise Apple would have allowed the converted from Flash applications to run on iOS. When you scrape away all the rhetoric, it comes down to the very simple issues of control and business model, even if Apple refuses to admit to that publicly. Apple does not see the iPhone or iPad as general, open computing platforms upon which the device owner may freely determine what applications to purchase, run, or even personally develop and use. Thus, if there is anything proprietary here, it is really the whole iPhone and iPad platform.

                                                         

                                                                  - Dov

                                                        • 25. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                          Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                                          Dov...

                                                           

                                                          Your points are valid and unfortunately out of my limited sphere of knowledge. Perhaps I need to read another perspective before tapping on my keyboard in future.

                                                          Hopefully my initial point of learning another language doesn't go unheeded as I am both an Apple devotee as well as an Adobe 'disciple'.

                                                           

                                                          My only hope is that the learning curve over the years and more recently with Flash Catalyst and InDesign is not in vain and future clients will not bypass those of us who use Flash.

                                                          Sadly in my experience, that has already begun.

                                                           

                                                           

                                                           

                                                           

                                                          Many Thanks...

                                                          Nicholas Petropoulos

                                                          • 26. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                            Joel Cherney Community Member

                                                            Ironically, the belief within Adobe is that this feature is one of the least used features of Acrobat and there consideration of removing it in the future. Thoughts?

                                                            If I'd known about it, I would have been using it for years. It certainly makes mass-conversion of INDDs to PDF a no-brainer.

                                                             

                                                            As it is, I have a script that handles the conversion of many INDDs to PDF, and I can specify which PDF Export Preset to use, which is something that this grab-many-INDDs-and-drop-em-on-Acrobat method doesn't seem to allow. I wouldn't have learned how to script this process if I'd known about this feature of Acrobat, because I developed said script to answer my coworkers' question "What's the easy way of making 150 one-pager PDFs from 150 InDesign files?"

                                                            • 27. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                              Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                                              Joel...

                                                              The real irony in all this is that Acrobat 9 gives you specific options for pdf conversions. You're able to choose any of the presets AND a special option for InDesign. Which doesn't work of-course. Go figure.

                                                               

                                                               

                                                               

                                                               

                                                              Many Thanks...

                                                              Nicholas Petropoulos

                                                              • 28. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                [Jongware] Community Member

                                                                This "open" message sounds like a nasty Windows echo from last year's "open" problems on Snow Leopard. That could be fixed ad hoc by not trying to open files from within any path containing (from memory) anything else than a..z and 0..9.

                                                                 

                                                                If memory serves, it was an Apple issue, and Apple corrected it with one of their OS updates.

                                                                • 29. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                  Nicholas Petropoulos Community Member

                                                                  I'm unsure about that as we've tried saving different InDesign files in various locations, even on the desktop. Still no go though.

                                                                   

                                                                   

                                                                   

                                                                   

                                                                  Many Thanks...

                                                                  Nicholas Petropoulos

                                                                  • 30. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                    Joel Cherney Community Member

                                                                    I dragged "tweet.indd" from my c:\testyfolder directly into Acrobat, and found the "open" dialog staring at me. I'm assuming that this feature is genuinely broken all the way. A bit of a shame that it's already on its way out - it sure is easy to use.

                                                                    • 31. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                      Matthew Laun Employee Hosts

                                                                      Acrobat's ability to create PDF from INDD files is based on an Acrobat plug-in called InDesignPI.acroplugin. This plug-in calls InDesign, passes the INDD file to it, and asks it to Export it to PDF, which is then opened in Acrobat. Note, if you don't have InDesign installed on the machine along with Acrobat, this workflow is never going to work!

                                                                       

                                                                      I did a couple quick tests and found that, on my system, though I have ID CS3, CS4 and CS5 installed, the Acrobat plug-in is always launching CS3. If the INDD was last saved in a version later than CS3, then CS3 cannot open the file, and Acrobat shows the non-helpful error "Open". Clicking OK to that error gives a more relevant error string, Acrobat could not open '[Filename].indd' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)." This message is slightly correct in that InDesign can't open INDD files from later versions.

                                                                       

                                                                      So, what if you only have CS5 installed on your machine? Can someone confirm for me the behavior in that situation? I fear that the plug-in, which uses BridgeTalk to call InDesign, doesn't have enough savvy to launch newer versions. I've reported this to the InDesign development team, who will discuss it with the Acrobat team and see what, if anything, can be done.

                                                                       

                                                                      The workaround is to simply do what the plug-in does for you. Launch InDesign, open the INDD, choose File > Export and select PDF.

                                                                       

                                                                      Sincerely,

                                                                      Matthew

                                                                      • 32. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                        BobLevine CommunityMVP

                                                                        I think the answer is somewhere in Bridge. You need to get Bridge to make some kind of call to InDesign CS5 to register that app.

                                                                         

                                                                        At least, that's my memory of an explanation I got for this a while back.

                                                                         

                                                                        Bob

                                                                        • 33. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                          juliedcollins

                                                                          Hi Matthew-

                                                                          Our workflow often involves combining multiple IND files into a pdf.  With CS4, we merely opened acrobat, clicked "Merge Files into a Single PDF" and dropped in the indesign files we wished to combine. Presto- we had one PDF with all IND files put together without having to go through indesign.

                                                                           

                                                                          In response to your post, I only have CS5 installed, and it seems as though Acrobat doesn't recognize ID CS5 as a program at all.   I believe I am current on all InDesign and Acrobat 9 updates to date - I'm running InDesign7.0.2 and Acrobat 9.3.4.

                                                                           

                                                                          When trying to open IND files through Acrobat, Acrobat launches and gives an error message that states: "Please select a file created by an application that resides on your computer."

                                                                           

                                                                          Acrobat can't call InDesign CS5 to open at all.  Could this be because Acrobat was not updated along with the CS5 suite and therefore doesn't recognize the new CS5 Indesign files?

                                                                           

                                                                          I read another blog that mentioned it could be a registry problem- they ran CCleaner and ran the registry fix.  Then uninstalled and reinstalled both Acrobat and Indesign.  What are your thoughts on this method?  It's hard for me to try this on my own, as it requires an administrative login- our IT department has us locked out.  I would like another opinion before I ask them to help.

                                                                           

                                                                          Do you forsee a fix from Adobe in the future?

                                                                           

                                                                           

                                                                          Thanks for your help!

                                                                          -Julie

                                                                          • 34. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                            Matthew Laun Employee Hosts

                                                                            I'm afraid this functionality is not currently supported with newer versions of Acrobat. The issue and it's workaround is described in this Knowledgebase article:

                                                                            http://go.adobe.com/kb/ts_cpsid_85557_en-us

                                                                             

                                                                            Sincerely,

                                                                            Matthew

                                                                            • 35. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                              juliedcollins Community Member

                                                                              Wow! Thanks for your super fast response!

                                                                               

                                                                              That's a shame - this Plugin feature was something my company used on a daily basis, and I've read many forum posts of designers very frustrated at the loss of this functionality.

                                                                               

                                                                              Is there any hope? Can we expect Adobe to release an update for the Plugin?  Or is this functionality just dead in the water?

                                                                               

                                                                              Thanks again Matthew!

                                                                              -Julie

                                                                              • 36. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                                Matthew Laun Employee Hosts

                                                                                I'm afraid I don't yet know the fate of the issue, but I'm not optimistic given the fact that this was part of a larger strategy which is no longer active, and I think there are higher priorities with regards to Acrobat.next.

                                                                                 

                                                                                Matthew

                                                                                • 37. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                                  Dov Isaacs Employee Hosts

                                                                                  There are no plans by either the Adobe Acrobat or InDesign product teams to support this going forward, for better or worse.

                                                                                   

                                                                                            - Dov

                                                                                  • 38. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                                    Eugene Tyson CommunityMVP

                                                                                    I only recently found out that Acrobat could do this. I've often had many files I wanted converted to PDF and I've always done them one at a time.

                                                                                     

                                                                                    What is the reason they aren't supporting this anymore? Because nobody seemingly uses it? Could it be just that nobody new it existed?

                                                                                     

                                                                                    Are there any plans to have a batch conversion of InDesign files to PDF?

                                                                                    • 39. Re: Acrobat and InDesign CS5 file issue
                                                                                      Matthew Laun Employee Hosts

                                                                                      This would be very easy to script. I found a reference to a solution that does just that, with some handy user interface. Look at this reply from Mr. Met on Jun 3, 2010 5:54 AM:

                                                                                       

                                                                                      http://forums.adobe.com/message/2864107#2864107

                                                                                       

                                                                                      Matthew

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