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Change artboard order/numbers

Explorer ,
Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

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I'm currently working on a project which involves over 16 artboards in the same document, though when i want to change the order of the artboards [for saving as a PDF] i have to move all my artboards content to new artboard, etc.etc.

This is really annoying, especially when i want to insert a new artboard between some excisting ones.

So is it possible to somehow change the order of the artboards, or they numbers [basically the same]?

Please let me know ASAP!

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Advocate , Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

Yes you can create or modify security settings in Acrobat. it's really an Acrobat thing, anyway. Illustrator can do it from the save as PDF dialogue, but it's really calling on Acrobat's features to do that.

If you open the pdf in Acrobat and right click anywhere on the page you can access document properties. One of the tabs of this pop up menu is for security. it should look familiar and be manageable.

good luck.

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Advocate ,
Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

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If you are in CS5, the Artboard panel will help you do what you want.

Otherwise, you might find it easiest to simply make your pdf and reorder the pages in Acrobat. It's quite easy, just open the page navigation panel and drag the pages to the order you want.

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Explorer ,
Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

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Unfortunatly [?] im still using CS4.

Also, i tried the method you describe, but when i then open the file in Illustrator, and save it again to apply security options, the page is reset to its original position!

Is it also possible to apply security options from Acrobat, the same way as in AI?

Yes, ive noticed the security panel, but that has got way more and different options as AI...

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Advocate ,
Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

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Yes you can create or modify security settings in Acrobat. it's really an Acrobat thing, anyway. Illustrator can do it from the save as PDF dialogue, but it's really calling on Acrobat's features to do that.

If you open the pdf in Acrobat and right click anywhere on the page you can access document properties. One of the tabs of this pop up menu is for security. it should look familiar and be manageable.

good luck.

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Explorer ,
Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

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Thanks, i guess i gotta figure that out then. Guess this solves my problem!

As for using InDesign: I've tried using it before, and well, its even harder to use than Maya 3D, making it like the worst program ive ever tried to use. I simply hate it.

Thanks for the attempted help though

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Community Expert ,
Mar 27, 2011 Mar 27, 2011

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InDesign is hard compared to Illustrator, like graphite is hard compared to diamonds.

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Explorer ,
Aug 04, 2010 Aug 04, 2010

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Maybe not what you want to hear, but this sounds like a job for InDesign. InDesign would do all of these things easily. I would keep all the art in AI and them place them in InDesign pages.

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New Here ,
Jun 13, 2012 Jun 13, 2012

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I don't agree in the least. Although InDesign and Illustrator share a common denominator in terms of fuctions, I choose one of the other depending on the content of my project: if a project is very graphic-based, I will definitely opt for Illustrator, no matter whether it consists of one artboard or 20. It would be bad practice and very time consuming to create certain elements in Illustrator and then having to import them in InDesign.

I know this is getting a bit off-topic, but Freehand (RIP) was one of the most advanced, user-friendly and complete programs of its time, it had power of an illustrator tool and the capabilities of a layout program. A true designer's tool!

Come on Adobe, learn something from that, after all you bought Macromedia all those years ago.

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LEGEND ,
Jun 13, 2012 Jun 13, 2012

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I can try to help you with the artboards.

Using the artboard panel

you drag the artboards to the relative position you want them to be. that is if you want artboard 2 to be where artboard 1 is yiu just drag it above artboard 1 or drag artboard 1 below artboard 2 and then do the same to the other artboards you wish to reorder.

From the flyout menu of the artboard panel select Rearrange Artboards all the artoards and their content will be moved and renumbered to flow in a 1,2,3…sequence.

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New Here ,
Jun 13, 2012 Jun 13, 2012

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Excellent! Thank you very much!

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New Here ,
Jun 13, 2012 Jun 13, 2012

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I've recently switched from CS4 to CS6 but I'm still unable to re-organise the page sequence in Illustrator... Can someone please advise me on what to do? Many thanks.

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Explorer ,
Mar 01, 2011 Mar 01, 2011

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I realize that this is an old thread, but there is a "poor man's trick"

to reorder the artboards in Illustrator CS4 without the use of Acrobat or other software.

You will have to delete your artboards in artboard tool (edit) mode,

but be sure to DEselect the "Move/Copy Artwork With Artboard" button.

When this button is deselected, you can easily delete the artboards,

but leave the content intact.

Delete all artboards, but leave the artboard that you want to have

as artboard #1 as the undeleted artboard.

(AI CS4 requires that you keep at least one artboard active.)

Following this, draw each successive artboard in turn over your content

(which should all be intact). You can use the New Artboard button on the

toolbar to insert a new artboard at the dimensions you specify.

Make sure that you draw the artboards in the exact order that you

wish the artboards to be ordered in your PDF or resulting output.

I realize it's a little troublesome, but I just did the same thing with

a 12-page document, and it took less than 10-15 minutes.

Now that I've reordered the artboards, I can output to PDF or

other image files, and the order remains intact.

Hope this helps!

Jeff

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Explorer ,
Mar 01, 2011 Mar 01, 2011

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This would indeed be a way. However, repositioning all the artboard exactly the same as before, could prove difficult.

I'm using CS5 now, and the artboard panel works great

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Community Expert ,
Feb 18, 2016 Feb 18, 2016

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Correct answer!

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

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New Here ,
Mar 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012

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Excellent. Your solution works best for me. Four pages done lickedy split!!

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New Here ,
Nov 14, 2012 Nov 14, 2012

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Thanks JapChap... this really helped out. I don't think I'll be switching to CS5 anytime soon. I got CS4 at home, CS2 at work!

Oh, and those folks lamenting about our good ol' FreeHand program? Man I sure do miss using it. Can't anymore now that I'm using Lion. Multi-page layout Functionality, Find & Replace, Paste Inside - those were my go-to functions that are not done very well (or at all) in AI. In FH this prob is easily solved by dragging the page over in a side menu display window...

Clipping Masks blow...

AI - dig in that FreeHand magic box and put the Paste Inside in AI! So many good functions that would make AI so much more design friendly... I wonder if the AI developers actually have "working-career-type" designers on their team?

Anyways, sorry for the rant if it doesn't relate... If it does, yeah man, that's right...

Peace & Command Z!

JP

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Community Expert ,
Dec 24, 2012 Dec 24, 2012

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version 2 Script in this thread

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1120156?tstart=0

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New Here ,
Jun 09, 2019 Jun 09, 2019

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This worked perfectly. I have the latest cloud version of AI but I don't have a paid version of Acrobat so the original solution was not good for me. I only had 6 pages so it took me less than 5 minutes to do it. Basically, delete all the artboard except the first one then add them again as you move them under the artwork.

Learned something new! THANK YOU

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Explorer ,
Mar 27, 2011 Mar 27, 2011

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If you are on a mac open the PDF in preview, open the sidebar with the page thumbnails, and drag them in the order you wish. Save.

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Explorer ,
Mar 28, 2011 Mar 28, 2011

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Reviving dead topics -.-

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New Here ,
Mar 30, 2011 Mar 30, 2011

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If the 'reviving' post adds something new, what is the problem?

If was not allowed to contribute, then why it is not auto locked after 30~60days or vanish it from Search?

The post that explained about the CS4 trick about deleting all and re-doing helped me a lot since i'm in CS4, not 5.

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Explorer ,
Mar 30, 2011 Mar 30, 2011

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I agree completely.

Some people get uptight when others contribute to

"old" threads, but if the conversation is helping someone,

what's the big deal?

The only issue with old threads is that replies are not

as likely to be spotted so easily.

It's funny how everybody is treating CS4 as "old software"

now, where the deficiencies in artboard functionality

were magically solved with CS5. True, CS5's Artboard

panel is convenient, but why must we always have to

throw money at the problem? (I know, some people

will tell me, "you don't have to upgrade, you know"...

but that's missing the point.) It would be oh-so-delightful

if we could enjoy added functionality (such as with the

Mac App Store) without having to "repurchase" the software.

Jeff

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2011 Mar 31, 2011

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for those still using "old software" I wrote a script based on Jeff's "poor man's trick" to reorder CS4 artboards. For best results, click on the Artboard tool before running, happy reordering.

reArrangeAB.PNG

#target illustrator

// var script.name = reArrangeArtboardsCS4only.jsx;

// var script.description = reArranges the Artboards indexes;

// var script.required = an open document with at least 2 artboards, CS4 only, not tested in CS5;

// var script.tip = click on the Artboard tool, before running, to see the AB Indexes

// var script.parent = CarlosCanto; // 3/31/11

// var script.elegant = false;

var idoc = app.activeDocument;

var abs = idoc.artboards;

var abcount = abs.length; // save the artboard count

j=1; // new AB order number, used for buttons labels

var btn = []; // left buttons to show AB count

var btn2 = []; // right buttons to set the new order

var win = new Window("dialog","ReArrange Artboards ");

var panelOgOrder = win.add("panel");

var panelNewOrder = win.add("panel");

win.orientation = "row"; // default is column, change to row

win.onClose = onCloseFunction;

for (i = 1 ; i<=abcount; i++) // add as many buttons as ABs

     {

          btn = panelOgOrder.add("button",undefined,"AB " + i, {name: i}); // named to know wich button was pressed

          btn2 = panelNewOrder.add("button",undefined, "Set Order", {name: i-1}); // -1, to use on 0 based Artboards

          btn.helpTip = "click for help";

          btn2.onClick = onClickButton; // add event listener

          btn.onClick = onClickButton1test;

     }

win.show();

function onClickButton() // add AB and set button label from 1 to AB count

    {

          

          this.text = j; // change button label from "Set Order" to 1,2, to AB count

          this.enabled = false; // disable to prevent clicking twice

          idoc.artboards.add(abs[this.properties.name].artboardRect); // duplicate AB, which one? 3rd button pressed, 3rd AB

          app.redraw();

          j = j+1; // add to the counter

          

          if (j>abcount) // after duplicating the AB, delete the originals

          {

               win.close();

               

               for (k=abcount-1; k>=0; k--)  // loop thru original ABs

                    {

                         idoc.artboards.remove(k); // and delete

                         //app.redraw();

                    }

          }

    }

function onClickButton1test()

     {

          //alert(this.properties.name);

          var msg = "Click the buttons on the right in the order \r";

          msg = msg + "you want the Artboards to be Re-Arranged. \r";

          msg = msg + "You are required to click all the buttons";

          alert(msg);

     }

function onCloseFunction()

     {

          if (j>1 && j<=abcount)

          {          

               var msg2 = "You shouldn't close the window. \r";

               msg2 = msg2 + "You should finish clicking all the buttons, \r";

               msg2 = msg2 + "other wise you'll end up with extra Artboards. \r";

               msg2 = msg2 + "If you must close, undo to get rid of extra Artboards. \r \r";

               msg2 = msg2 + "Are you sure you want to close this window?";

               

               close = confirm(msg2);

               if (close == false)

                    return false;

          }

     }

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Explorer ,
Mar 31, 2011 Mar 31, 2011

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Fascinating, and an interesting solution, Carlos.

I'm very impressed with your scripting skills!

Although your script is certainly useful as-is with a small number

of artboards, I noticed a few things that perhaps you might like

to look at, to make the script even better.

- While running the script and clicking on the artboard numbers in the order you want,

   the artboard numbers on the actual artboard seem to be changed to numbers

   in reverse order, which is confusing. So basically, you have two things

   going on: the renumbered script order on the JavaScript dialog, and

   the actual artboard script numbers, which appear to change dynamically

   even before the script is finished running.

   It would be less confusing if the actual artboard numbers didn't change until

   you pressed an "Execute" button or something. Maybe you could store the

   new artboard sequence in a temporary array, and then actually commit the changes

   when clicking "Execute" or "Save".

- A "Cancel" button might be nice, in case the user messes up 🙂

- Clicking the buttons in order is interesting; but it might be even easier to understand

  if these were all text boxes, and the user typed in the new numbers to allocate to the

  old numbers...

Makes me wish I knew more about JavaScript, so I could collaborate on this with you 😉

Anyway, it is really cool to see that someone like yourself is interested in providing

solutions for people who don't want to - or can't - make the switch to CS5!

Jeff

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2011 Mar 31, 2011

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Hi Jeff, thanks for the feed back, I appreciate all your comments.

- point 1 - let me explain how it was intended to work to avoid confusion. The interface has nothing to do with the physical placement of the artboards and the buttons on the left with the labels "AB 1" etc.. are irrelevant, they're just a visual to know what button on the right you're clicking.

In the screen shot I provided, I have 4 artboards and the indexes go 4, 3, 2, 1 from left to right. I had already reversed the order that originally was 1, 2, 3, 4 from left to right.

So this is the mechanics to switch AB 4 with AB 3 in my screen shot to have the order 3, 4, 2, 1 from left to right. Looking at the indexes,

- is AB 1 in the right order? yes, click on the button next to it

- is AB 2 in the right order? yes, click on the button next to it

- is AB 3 in the right order? NO, I want AB 4 to become 3rd, click on the button next to AB 4

and so on, confusing?

- to avoid the AB numbers to change as you click (just visually), comment out line 42

     //app.redraw();

     yeah, if the user changes its mind half way thru, not making the actual changes would help. I thought of that, but I figured since it is easy to reArrange...well...just do it again as punishment

- point 2 - even if I said one's required to click all the buttons, I kind of lied , you can still close the window by clicking on the X at top. I realize that after I made a test with a ridiculous amount of artboards and the buttons couldn't fit on the dialog. If the user messes up, no problem, undo is our friend. It could be incorporated into the dialog.

- point 3 - text boxes is a very interesting suggestion...version 2 perhaps?

hope it helps to clarify the Usage of the script, also clicking on the buttons on the left brings up "help". Thanks again for the feedback.

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