Flatten pages adobe acrobat 9 standard.

[Guest]

Getting looped around blogs and dead links for hours must be the single most frustrating thing in the world.  Especially when it is a simple known problem. 

This discussion is both a question and a mini rant.  I have lost hours on this question being told that the solution is in drop down directories that don't exist and follow this link and the links area dead.   Here is the question that continues to be asked without getting a clear answer..   

I want to flatten my Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard .pdf document.  That is if I add a stamp or and image I then want to make it one document without separate objects that can be copied, deleted or edited.  I see this functionality as being as simple as save, open and print.         

Keep in mind I have read 20 to 30 posts and just keep going round and round without a solution.

#1. IF THE FUNCTIONALITY ALREADY EXISTS, Please tell me the exact path to get to it.  Every solution offered so far leads me to menu items that don't exist for me on my version.

#2.  If I have to add a piece of java scrip/file to do that. Then I need the exact file and I need the instructions on how to do this.      

It will not be a help to reference a fix that was available 2 years ago and is not available today.  Sorry for my frustration but it is mind boggling to me that this simple function is so hard to execute.  

Please Help

[George_Johnson · Accepted solution]

Have you seen this?: UVSAR : Selective Flattener tool for Adobe Acrobat 8, 9 and X

This utility is provided as a JavaScript file which you must then install in a particular  directory on your system, as detailed in the installation instructions.

One problem you may have is that the JavaScript console isn't readily available in Acrobat Standard as it is with Pro, so some of the instructions you're seen for determining the installation directory aren't helpful.

Another may be that on Windows some of the folders are hidden by default, so you may not be seeing them. If you let us know what operating system you have, it would be helpful.

[Guest]

Windows 7

[Guest]

George - I am trying the UVSAR solution.  Dowloaded file extracted and put it into the correct sub directory.  The I relaunched Adobe.   I dont see that anything has changed. Now what?

[George_Johnson]

If correctly installed, it will add a new menu item: Edit > Flatten

with the following sub-menu items:

Flatten Forms and Comments

Flatten Everything

Online Help

If you don't see these, can you tell us exactly what folder you placed the .js file into?

[Guest]

WE HAVE A WINNER !!!!

I had one more problem but I figured it out.   In an attempt to flatten I saved one of my files by printing to .pdf after I had added a"stamp".   When I tried to flatten using this new tool it said nothing was flattened but the stamp was still a separate object. 

i reopened the original file pre- the second save/print and BINGO.   I can add a stamp now, and yes the new flatten choice is there under edit. and after hitting flatten all the image is now embedded.  

The UVSAR solution worked!!!!!!   Thanks to George Johnson and the creators of this script.  It sure seems that the flatten function should have been a basic function in even the 9 standard.    The loop of previous non solutions was clearly making things crazy. Thanks so much for the help!   

[jane-e]

http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2010/02/add-a-flatten-document-menu-item-to-acrobat/

[Guest]

Jane-e  "Thanks but that blog you mentioned has dead links and was one of the solutions I tried.   The file they mention cannot be found anywhere. 

[jane-e]

flatten.txt · GitHub

[Guest]

Thanks for the file and your help.

[George_Johnson]

jane-e wrote:

flatten.txt · GitHub

That's not the file they referred to in the blog post you linked to.

[sunshinestate7]

I have AA Pro 9.  Spent hours trying to figure this out.  I think I have.   I used the line tool to mark out info on a doc and then used typewriter tool to create text edit.  Once I saved the document (as a copy), I selected File > Print > Adobe PDF > then under the comments and forms select > Document and Markups.  It saved everything as a flattened file.  Yay!

[try67]

That's a very round-about way of doing it. Did you try the tools mentioned above?

Basically, this can be done with a single line of code:

this.flattenPages();