Can't get editable multi-page PDFs open

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
November 9, 2022
2 replies
782 views

Yesterday for the first time I tried opening a PDF in Illustrator to grab some content from a document I'm converting.

Rather than the typical clipping path/masked/grouped stuff that needs to be released, the page just showed up as a single, uneditable object.

Tried it again this morning with the same results.

Both files have no security enabled.

The content in both clearly contains vectors (e.g. text) but when viewed as Outline, nothing is visible.

[edit] This seems to be happening with multi-page PDFs when all pages are imported.

Any suggestions appreciated.

How to

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Correct answer turner111

You did UNcheck "Import PDF pages as links" right?

Hi -sorry for the delay.... yes, but it looks like a computer restart (vs. just CC) did the trick.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Is Embed available?

John Mensinger

Community Expert

As I suspect you know, opening PDF's that weren't built and saved in Illustrator isn't really an intended workflow. Without knowing the origin and construct of the PDF contents in detail, it's hard to diagnose the issue. Are you able to share one of those PDF's?

[edit] This seems to be happening with multi-page PDFs when all pages are imported.

Does that mean if you open only a specific page, the result is different?

T

turner111Author

Inspiring

Hi John-

Sorry, content is confidential.

However, as you note, yes - when I open single pages, they're editable as they would normally be.
I anticipated simply having a number of pages opened & editable; I guess there's some use for opening all pages in a document without the content being editable. Not for what I need to do, though 🙂

Met1

Legend

There's a choice when you open a multi-page pdf to have the pages as links, or to be fully (usual pdf caveat) editable... see below...

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