Using File\Paste with a multi-page .pdf

[ceilr]

Hello everyone,

I am running Adobe Reader in Creative Cloud on my PC, and Adobe Scan and Adobe Reader in my 7th gen. Apple iPad.  Further, forgive me if I am asking this in the wrong forum!  Maybe this question should go to the InDesign community, but as .pdfs are at the center of my question , I hope someone here has had the same experience to provide a solution.  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.

[try67]

I'm sure it's possible using a script, but you should ask in the InDesign forum about it.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Why do you need to put the PDFs in InDesign? Are you adding something to them? (Sorry if I missed it.)

Assuming you have the Creative Cloud with InDesign, you can combine your PDFs with Acrobat Pro. You can also run OCR on the PDF for searchablity.

If you need to use InDesign for some reason, ID comes with a script to place multi-page PDFs.

Finally, ID can create some large PDFs. Try using the Reduce File Size function in Acrobat Pro.

[ceilr]

Yes, I am adding a lot to them. 

I'm creating a searchable e-book, and need a layer under the scanned pages in InDesign on which to type the text.

Then I add a layer on top of those layers to type in my own notes.

I can then hide the two extra layers as I need to, to get them out of the way for whatever reason.

On top of that, I scanned each page just beyond the edges, and they need some cleaning up.

Hope this helps.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

>>I'm creating a searchable e-book, and need a layer under the scanned pages in InDesign on which to type the text.

The OCR feature of Searchable Text will do this in Acrobat.

[JR Boulay]

"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?"

Search for the "PlaceMultipagePDF" or the "MultiPageImporter" script in the InDesign Scripts panel, it's magic.

But Creamer Training is right, you just need Acrobat Pro.

[ceilr]

I have Creative Cloud and do not see Acrobat Pro in the list there.  Just plain Acrobat.

I know nothing about scripts.  I blindly hunted around InDesign and eventually found Window\Utilities\Scripts, where "PlaceMultipagePDF" and "MultiPageImporter do not appear .  Maybe they are somewhere else in InDesign, but I need a navigation path to find it.  And after that, I don't know what to do.

I did manage to find from File\Place in InDesign how to place any page within a multi-page .pdf.  It is fast and easy; however, the 22MB ID doc swelled to a 100MB when it became a .pdf.  (I used File \ Adobe PDF Presets \ [High Quality] to plant the .pdf where I want it to go.)  I sent the ebooks to Dropbox to move it to Adobe Reader in iPad.  However, Dropbox can't open a file this large.  If I skip viewing the .pdf in Dropbox (which I can't do, anyway), Adobe Reader tells me the file is corrupted and won't open!  I was hoping 22MB would reduce to 14MB or so as a .pdf.  This would seem to be an Adobe Reader/Acrobat issue.

I hope there is a way to resolve the swelling memory issue.  Again, I need navigation paths to reach what needs to be done, and perhaps some further instructions.

Thank you.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Acrobat Pro is listed as just Acrobat in the Creative Cloud app. Remove Reader from your computer (not iPad) and install Acrobat from the CC app.

You didn't look deep enough for the script:

Window>Utilities>Scripts>Application>Samples>JavaScript

DropBox has a 50GB file size limit, but is also limited by your account size. However, even the free account is 2 GB. Make sure you leave enough time for the PDF to upload to the Dropbox cloud and then down to the other computer/system.

[JR Boulay]

ceilr  "I have Creative Cloud and do not see Acrobat Pro in the list there. Just plain Acrobat."

[JR Boulay]

ceilr  "I know nothing about scripts. I blindly hunted around InDesign"

You just have to found it and double-click.