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Vanka472
Inspiring
April 26, 2018
Answered

Merging Multiple Text Boxes

  • April 26, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 6906 views

Hi Guys,

So I have just finished designing a document in Indesign. The client wants it so that, when opened in Indesign each page is 1 solid text field that can be edited. After using the text merge script in InDesign, I have gone ahead and one that so in Indesign, it is 1 solid text field.

BUT

When opening the file in Acrobat for editing, at certain spots the text fields are all separated and are not reflecting what is shown in Indesign. I need to find a way to make this all one so that the end client can make it easy for multiple people to edit this document. Any help would be appreciated!

Cheers

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Vanka472

Ha, your so right. Man, this is gonna set me back because I have designed everything in design, and all the formatting is set this way, Transposing to Word is gonna be a PITA, but there must be a way to create a Word template simply. I know this is not in the process for this forum, but I can't seem to find any information on doing such a thing in Word --- would you by chance have a direction you could send me in?


This is the conclusion in the meantime. You can't expect Indesign exports as PDF to follow the same textual layouts in Acrobat. Acrobat is coding is a mystery not known to the common folk for a solution on making your PDF work in the same element that your file is designed in Indesign.

The best solution is move everything to Word and don't try to use the PDF as the editing solution for a template style design for the end user. Since as mentioned above, the end client will in someway just try to use Word anyway, and most likely will succeed in doing so.

Thanks for all the helpful responses!

1 reply

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
April 26, 2018

No, it can't be done. If they want to edit the file they should use InDesign. PDF files were not meant to be edited in such a way.

V
Vanka472Author
Inspiring
April 26, 2018

See my issue with all of this (on top of the fact that it is not working, is that certain pages ARE doing this correctly, and are placing themselves together as 1 solid text field, while others are not. Now in certain ones, there are issues where the H1 headers are one field but all of the paragraphs underneath is in a separate field, which is okay as well. I just wonder why Acrobat is doing it to some and not to others.

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
April 26, 2018

The algorithm behind it is not known to us, only to Adobe. It does an approximation of what characters belong together, but it's not exact science. The structures you created in InDesign are lost when you convert the file to PDF. The two formats are quite different, and the latter is not meant for editing or layout work.

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