Correspondence between Layers elements and artwork elements?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Using the current version of Illustrator on Win11. I am a long-time, fairly competent but not expert user of Illustrator.

In a current project, I have having to extract many charts and graphs from the prior print PDF of a book. (The PDF and edition are ten years old; the original chart files etc. are long lost and too complex, in aggregate, to rebuild from scratch. The extraction method, to clean AI files, is working well.)

When I open a book page in PDF and delete all the unwanted content, two things happen.

First, I often find a "shadow" group of text from what seems to be the next page in the book, invisible except in Outline view. It's not selectable in any way I can find. (I have to find the right Clip Group in Layers and delete from there.) Mostly — why and what's going on with that?

Second, the page and chart are the usual jumble of separate bits and pieces, going back to the original drawing structure. Then the ID-to-PDF-to-AI conversion leaves more, such as colored rectangles behind the text. It's REALLY tedious to select these leftovers; I sometimes have to note a text block's location, move it, select and delete the colored bit (which was part of the background tint for the chart in the book), then move the text block back.

I have the Layers pane open and extended so that I can see everything, and I can often guess which Clip Group represents that phantom page text, and delete it. But not always, and when it comes to associating Unwanted Color Rectangle A with an entry in the Layer list... I don't see any kind of highlight or connection or way to tell which Path or Clip Group or whatever represents what element in the drawing. (Other than the tiny icons, which are only a bit of help. So, lots of select-delete-d*mn!-Ctrl-Z.

So — question — when I have such a file open, is there ANY way to associate a Layer entry with a drawing element, or vice versa? Is there any overall easier process to weed out the unwanted (PDF-export) clutter? All better methods solicited.

[Monika Gause]

You know that you can search elements in the Layers panel?

The selected elements can be found by clicking on the spyglass icon.You can also search by name.

You maybe want tocheck out the VectorFirstAid plugin.

A sample PDF could help.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

These are not organized files — they are the gobbledegook created by a PDF export and then import of that page into AI.

What I'd like, and I am surprised to see doesn't exist, is a simple highlight in the Layers list when an element is selected  —which seems to be the model for everything else in the Adobe suite. (That is, if I select an item in an InDesign layout, the corresponding style, object, element etc. lists light up.)

So, unless you've created your AI file with good practices and named everything sensibly, how do you locate, say, a small colored rectangle behind some text? I can eventually burrow in and select it, or I can work down the list of Layer items and delete them (then restore if it's the wrong one).... but a simple correspondence between drawing elements and Layer items... is nonexistent?

Here's a typical page I've exported from the original print PDF of ca. 2014 —

Never mind that it's a bit of a mess, all I want to do is delete everything but the contents of one of the two charts, so that I have a clean, editable version I can place in the new edition.

Here's the same page in Outline view —

This one seems to have two other pages' text ghosted into it. Those are single Clip Groups, so once I figure out which CG in the Layers list is theirs, I can delete them — but that's a guessing game and I can't find any way to directly select these "phantoms" in the drawing.

And here's about one quarter of the Layers list for the same page —

Once I've deleted most of the page text and content, all that's left is dozens of <Path> and <ClipGroup> entries, with a few semi-identifiable parts of the actual chart elements.

Many of the elements in the 'stripped' page are not selectable by any method I know of, until I select (for example) a top text frame and move it out of the way. No "click through" or "select next object" method works. And some items, like those phantom text blocks, are not selectable in the drawing at all; I can only guess at which Clip Group to delete until they go away.

So if there's some aspect of AI that will let me select the unwanted elements for deletion, using either direct-select methods or the Layers list, I'd love to be pointed to it. I'm again surprised that there is no correspondence between the drawing elements and the component list... that would make it trivial.

[Monika Gause]

You should be able to select anything using the direct selection tool. And when it's selected it will be highlighted in the Layers panel. Or you can locate it with the spyglass button.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, that would be my thought. However, selecting any line in Layers does not select/highlight any element in the drawing. And selecting any element in the drawing does not highlight any line in the Layers list. If items are selected in both, they do not change (or even null) the selection in the other. The two appear to be completely disconnected. This is why I'm so confused; this does not seem like normal behavior. (I am having no problems with AI in any other way.)

Searching the Layers list is not of use. Yes, I can enter "Clip Group" — and have it reduce the list to ten or fifteen <Clip Group> items. Or dozens of <Path> items. None of this makes it any easier to identify and select a desired element.

I am very, very experienced with Adobe apps and how to select items under difficult conditions, but I keep encountering situations where a tiny text frame (containing one digit, for example) has a matching rectangle behind it (containing the original background tint from the page)... and no matter which selection tool I use, in any key combination, I cannot "click through" to that second element. I have to move the text frame, and then I can select and delete it. As there can be two dozen of these little stacks in the exported page, and the Layers list is not of help in identifying or selecting them... it's pretty tedious.

None of this seems "right" by all prior experience, and my question is what am I missing to make this process simpler — but if there is supposed to be highlight/selection correspondence between drawing elements and the Layers list, and is not... I'm baffled.

[Monika Gause]

Without seeing any real document, it's impossible to help you.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

[Uploaded sample pages deleted for client privacy reasons; irrelevant to solution anyway. 🙂 ]

Understood; I am usually answering these questions in the ID forum, and I know some issues can't be resolved from descriptions. But unless there is something corrupt about these files, it still seems to me to be a question of AI process/interface, not specific elements of the files. But I may be wrong.

These pages were created in InDesign about 2014. I am working from individual chapter exports to PDF, the original print files used then. My process is to extract the pages with charts on them, and then in AI 2025, strip away everything that is not the basic chart. I then resize it, do bits of cleanup, and save it as an AI file for import into the new edition of the textbook. (I have no other sources for the charts short of recomposing them.)

The first file ("phantom") has the phantom text element from another page, which shows only in Outline view. There's nothing else of consequence here except that I'd like an experienced opinion about why this unwanted content is showing up, and how to select it in the drawing rather than guessing at which <Clip Group> entry repesents it, for deletion there.

The second file — sorry, I was unable to find a file that had both faults as I delete my working extracts as I go — has two charts (but no phantom text). It is fairly easy to select and delete the content and leave just the charts, although that's not always the case (sometimes random page content is connected to a chart element and I can't just delete the whole item). That's not an issue, overall.

But once stripped to the charts, you'll see that there are rectangles behind the text labels etc. They are separate and behind the text frames. These are examples of elements I am finding impossible to select in the drawing (once in a great while something will click and by looking at the Color panel I can tell I have the rectangle selected and not the text, but this is extremely rare). I can find no correspondence between any Layers list item and any drawing item to guide this process, and the two "lists" do not seem to be linked.

So —

• Any explanation of the phantom text, and how most easily to select and delete it;
• Any method to select any bit of a chart for deletion or modifcation, using whatever selection method and/or the Layers list;
• ...appreciated.

[Kurt Gold]

I would also request at least one or two sample files with specific instructions, so one can inspect and probably provide some satisfying approaches.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Okay, I found what I was missing here. I am not sure if I never asked quite the right question, or if I misunderstood @Monika Gause's directions. I see now that clicking on the small circle icon associated with each Layer entry highlights the corresponding drawing element — and that's probably as complete a solution as I need or could ask for.

To be fair, though —

• Monika's suggestion seems to point to the "magnifying glass" in the search panel, and "searching" for the item I sought. As almost none of the elements in my work PDFs have any sensible name, this was not a useful approach.
• I can't find any reference to a "spyglass icon" in AI. At all. So if that's a name for the little highlight icon, I missed the reference. I can't seem to find a name for this little icon, but the pop-up tip simply describes its function, without giving any reference name. Even the Adobe Help pages I searched don't reference this icon or address the lack of highlighting between list and element. (Please feel free to point me to a Help entry that addresses this icon's function in selecting elements...)
• I still find it odd/less than optimal/useless that simply selecting an item in the Layers list does not highlight the corresponding element in the drawing; from two decades of expereince with Adobe apps, that's a nearly universal association between component lists and document elements. Having to find and figure out a completely separate mysterious icon is... odd and confusing. And that it doesn't work in reverse, highlighting the list item when a drawing item is selected... even more odd. To me.

I tried to make my questions as clear as possible, but as only a workaday Illustrator user, I missed some turns with terminology and function. (I deal with such guessing-game terminology over in ID all the time, so I know it can be misleading.) Thanks for the answers given, though.

ETA: and I now see that a magnfying glass/"spyglass" appears in the list item to do this selection... but only after I have used Search to reduce the list to, say, <Clip Group>s. I'm sure this functionality all has a purpose, reason and history, but having to search for an element, then guess at which one might be the desired one, then hovering to bring up the 'spyglass,' then clicking it to return to the full Layers list and have it highlighted in the drawing... okay.

Just hoping this excursion helps some other lost soul some day. 🙂

[Monika Gause]

I was referring to this: https://youtu.be/qLRbbHrr4vM

Sorry for dark interface, it's almost illegible, currently I have to use it.

[Kurt Gold]

As per your sample files, there is no general-purpose way to clean them up, but often it helps a lot to first delete (or hide) all clipping paths.

For example, the Extract-page-chart-debris.pdf can be tidied in a few steps:

1. Select menu > Object > Clipping Masks
2. Delete the selection.
3. With the Selection tool(s) drag across the unwanted objects and delete them until only the chart remains.

No laborious rummaging in the Layers palette required.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That doesn't really get anywhere in the cleanup process. The issue is not the big rectangle behind the chart  — even fumble-fingers me can select and delete that visually. And deleting all of the stuff outside the charts is equally easy. But when all that easy stuff is gone, I am frequently left with something like this—

— and it's those colored rectangles behind the text (blue in this case; there are sometimes other colors; the pink is format highlighting) that are unwanted, damnably difficult to select, and not clearly identified in the Layers list. It's a tedious five to fifteen minutes of work to move/select/delete just those unwanted highlights (which I assume are created by the PDF export process for some reason that it thinks the underlying full-chart rectangle doesn't work). Across a hundred or more charts, created how and in what tool I don't know, there are endless variations of this. And as I'm not the author/SME, I have to pay close attention so that I don't delete any intended content in the charts, which is often linked to other elements.

Being able to step through the Layers list and click the little highlight icon is somewhat less tedious, but saves other steps and seems to be the best solution overall.

[Kurt Gold]

Well, assuming the text above the coloured rectangles is (unlocked) live type, you can just:

- Select menu > Object > All Type Objects
- Lock the selection in the Object menu (default shortcut: Cmd / Ctrl+2)
- Select and delete the rectangles in one or several steps

There are other ways, of course, but this one should be pretty fast in many cases.

I've created various action sets that can (almost) completely automate the entire cleanup procedure in different situations.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That's a very effective process. Thanks.

There are other such small issues in variant charts (such as a tinted shape used to "break" a chart line, which has to be fixed to allow a different and sometimes varying chart background in the ID layout), but these two bits of understanding will make the remaining work a lot easier. This is all a matter of having to use stand-on-my-head workarounds with fairly crappy source material — I hope never to have to use such wonky processes again. 😛