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Inspiring
May 31, 2023
Answered

Choosing page 2 (3, 4, etc.) from a multi-page .pdf using File\Place

  • May 31, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 599 views

Hello,

 

I recently posted to the Adobe Reader community, not knowing if the post should really come here.  They sent me here anyway, which is fine, suggesting that there is likely a script out there.  I know nothing about scripts, including where to find a place to put them, so any instructions I might receive cannot assume anything.  I find that presenters on video tutorials talk and demonstrate too fast.  Well-written instructions are preferred.

 

Here is what I sent to the Reader forum:

==========

I am running Adobe Reader in Creative Cloud on my PC, and Adobe Scan and Adobe Reader in my 7th gen. Apple iPad.  Here is what’s going on:

 

I scanned an old (1901) book into my iPad using Adobe Scan (really handy, btw).  The book is 40 pages, including covers.  Forty scans are too much for one .pdf, so I scanned the pages into five separate .pdf docs of nine pages or less apiece.  My ultimate goal is to create a a searchanble e-book in .pdf format from Adobe InDesign (ID) that can live in my iPad for reference/research purposes.   (Note: I borrowed the book from the owner, who lives some 1800 miles away.  Starting over with single-page scans in Adobe Scan would be wonderful and probably advised, but is not an option.  The book’s paper is very fragile and I’m leery about having it mailed here.)

 

ID’s File\Place function easily picks up the first page of a .pdf to drop in, but is there a way to use File\Place to search within a multi-page .pdf and pick up page 2, page 3 and so on?  It seems only page 1 can be picked up with File\Place.

 

To be able to use File\Place for all pages, I opened each of the multi-page .pdfs and created a separate .pdf of each page from the Print dialog box (choosing Adobe PDF).  No success.  Although the images in the single-page.pdfs came out smaller in size, the resulting .40-page pdf e-book became three times larger in size than the ID doc itself!  Pdfs just don’t work this way!

 

Most bothered this morning by this outcome, I troubleshot the larger .pdf size and discovered that the newly created, single .pdfs are behind it. 

 

The only thing left was to open each multi-page .pdf and copy each page to paste into the ID doc.  (This procedure would make the ID forum people cringe, but...!)   My resulting e-book now is about 2/3 smaller than the ID doc, as it should be.  However, the ID doc is now much larger in size to get the smaller .pdf e-book.   Copy/Paste is not an ideal solution, but it did what I needed it to do.  SO....

 

I have been wondering, anyway, if it’s possible to grab a page other than page 1 within a multi-page .pdf to File\Place into an ID doc.  Now the need to know is great.  Is there a way?  (If not, I have an idea about how to fashion it, but not the software know-now to make it happen.)

 

Thank you very much.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Steve Werner

When choosing File > Place, choose the Show Import Options checkbox at the bottom of the dialog:

 

 

Then you'll find the options for which pages to use:

 

2 replies

Dave Creamer of IDEAS
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 31, 2023
David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
ceilrAuthor
Inspiring
May 31, 2023

Ugh, I have just now discovered that I am only halfway there.

I found everything in the above instructions, and now all scans within multi-page .pdfs are in place.  The ID doc states about 22 MB.

But when I saved the 40-page ID doc to a .pdf, it saved with 105 MB.  My iPad just can't deal with that.

I was so hoping for about 14MB.  Can anyone explain what's going on and how to remedy this?

m1b
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 31, 2023

Hi @ceilr, there are two things to think about:

 

1. Why is the document so large? If you are making a "searchable" eBook, then I assume you have used OCR to convert the scanned images into text. And, if so, I would expect the document to be much smaller. Are you able to remove the scans now, and just have the text? Or alternatively, crop down the scans to just the images? Or something like that? I don't know what your document is like, so this may not be possible. But it currently sounds like you have the complete pages scanned in the document still.

 

2. After exporting the huge PDF from Indesign, use Adobe Acrobat to get the exported pdf's file size down to 14MB. Open in Acrobat, then choose File > Save As Other... > and then choose either "Reduced Size PDF" or "Optimized PDF" (the latter will give you more control—but you will have to experiment with different settings, such as compression and resolution values).

 

See if you get anywhere with those ideas.

- Mark

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Steve WernerCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
May 31, 2023

When choosing File > Place, choose the Show Import Options checkbox at the bottom of the dialog:

 

 

Then you'll find the options for which pages to use:

 

ceilrAuthor
Inspiring
May 31, 2023

HALLELUJAH!  Thank you!  So glad!

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 31, 2023

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