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Known Participant
November 14, 2011
Question

Export multiple artboards {canvases} to separate files

  • November 14, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 44080 views

Hi there!

I tried to find a  way how to export my artboards into single file to the multiple files - each file one canvas. Do I have to manage it separately? I hope not. Monkey kind of work...

Thank you in advance!

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2 replies

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 14, 2011

If you save it to PDF, each artboard will be one page in the file. In Illustrator CS5, you can even save artboards to separate AI files in one go. It's in the second "Save" dialog box

November 14, 2011

Monika, I have an odd question for you:

How did you come to discover this "Save to separate AI artboards" feature?

I ask because I've recently upgraded to CS5, did a fairly detailed reconnaissance of the menus, panels, dialogs, and tools, read all the relevant tutorials and files, watched a comprehensive video course on CS5's new features. Nowhere was this convenient new capability mentioned.

Did you stumble upon it on your own? Had you read or seen or heard about it in some formal documentation that I missed?

This is not a big deal. It's just that, whenever I discover something like this, I always wonder what other conveniences I'm missing

Participating Frequently
November 14, 2011

Think this is what you're after.

If you save as an eps tick the box marked "use artboards" and choose all artboards.

This should save one eps file with all the canvases and one eps file for each canvas, named ...01.eps ...02.eps etc.

M

Known Participant
November 14, 2011

Well,

you are right, mate! This is really helpful. But what to do, if you are supposed to deliver PDFs for example? {Except loading each .eps and save them as PDF }

Participating Frequently
November 14, 2011

As far as I'm aware you can't save each artboard as a pdf without doing it one by one - eg selecting a range of pages (or one page in your case)

I use CS4 so can only comment on what that will do, CS5 may be different.

You could save them all as eps files, then load all of them at the same time so you have multiple documents open, then File menu, Scripts, SaveDocsAsPDF - this will save them all as seperate pdfs for you

M