Convert PDF to INDD

[pelicanmanufacturing]

Is it possible to do in the Adobe CC (latest) suite? Not looking to use any external software.

[amaarora]

Hi,

I dont think it is possible...

I would use pdf2indd by Recosoft. You get first 5 conversions for free...

-Aman

[pelicanmanufacturing]

I said not looking to use any external software, I am already aware of pdf2indd by recosoft

[Derek Cross]

You can Place a PDF into InDesign but it's not editable.

[pelicanmanufacturing]

I said convert not place, I am already aware of placing documents

[Danny Whitehead.]

No.

[JointyJr]

As said, no.

But

You can take it apart and put it back together again?

Buy using 'export all images' in acrobat, copy/paste text from acrobat to Indesign, load the pdf into illustrator to 'rip' out any vector elements and obtain any colour/font info.

Not fast if you have a large document but it's better than nothing...

[pelicanmanufacturing]

Yeah, I know I was looking for a quick fix rather than recreating something, thanks though

[pelicanmanufacturing · Accepted solution]

It appears not to be an option. I submit an official feature request for the function, you can vote on it here, enough votes and they may put it in the program- Convert PDF to INDD – Adobe InDesign Feedback

[Danny Whitehead.]

The way I understand it, they'd have to code InDesign to make assumptions about how you want a PDF, built in an application that doesn't function like InDesign, to be rebuilt. I just can't imagine ever being comfortable with the reliability of such a conversion.

I think the best you can remotely expect is a way of embedding the INDD into a PDF exported from InDesign, similar to Illustrator and Photoshop.

[Laubender]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Danny+Whitehead.  wrote

… I think the best you can remotely expect is a way of embedding the INDD into a PDF exported from InDesign, similar to Illustrator and Photoshop.

Hi Danny,

even better would be an IDML "layer" in an exported PDF so that several versions of InDesign could access the IDML data.

Best,
Uwe

[Jongware]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Danny+Whitehead.  wrote

The way I understand it, they'd have to code InDesign to make assumptions about how you want a PDF, built in an application that doesn't function like InDesign, to be rebuilt. I just can't imagine ever being comfortable with the reliability of such a conversion.

Even with Illustrator you cannot blindly open and edit any PDF ever created. "Created with InDesign" is not a valid criterion either; I can for instance add a 3D illustration into a PDF originally created with InDesign.

[BobLevine]

You could try opening the PDF in Acrobat, save as Word and then place the Word file in InDesign.

Won't be perfect by any longshot but it will only take a few minutes to try it.

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Some observations on this topic …

Ironically, in the early beta test builds of what became InDesign, in fact one was able to not only place PDF, but also open PDF. The feature was very quickly “pulled” since it was exceptionally difficult to guarantee a reasonable mapping of any arbitrary PDF content to the structure of an InDesign document. And this was before transparency even entered the PDF imaging model!

Illustrator tried to support round-tripping by using PDF as a container for private data which is the real Illustrator format. Thus, if you save an Illustrator file as PDF and select the editability option (not available with all PDF export options), the resultant PDF file effectively contains two files, one the actual final form PDF content and the other, the private Illustrator file format which is ignored by Acrobat. However, if you edit the PDF file in Acrobat, those changes don't get reflected in the Illustrator content. To make matters worse, this has led many to believe that Adobe Illustrator is a general purpose PDF editor, which it absolutely isn't. (I discuss that in detail in other threads!) Simply stated, the PDF imaging model is much more complex than the features supported by Adobe Illustrator.

The same issue but with even more complications would be true if InDesign was to support a private-data-within-PDF file save feature. Why? InDesign supports fewer features of the full PDF imaging model than even Illustrator does (although it does support documents with more than one color space).

The likelihood of Adobe providing a PDF conversion to InDesign feature within InDesign (or Acrobat) is exceptionally low due to the literal impossibility of doing a full conversion versus customer expectations.

Personally, I would recommend the third party plug-in or utility route for casual PDF to InDesign conversion, understanding that a 100% conversion of arbitrary PDF to InDesign is literally impossible.

          - Dov

[amaarora]

Hi Dov,

Thanks once again for that useful insight. Surprising to hear that InDesign was able to open a pdf!

-Aman

InDesign Engineering Team

[arnom17776570]

Aman to that!

[Abambo]

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@will25171488kyd3 wrote:

How to import a PDF into InDesign

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Please refrain from waking up old threads, when you do not wave an answer. Your post is not in relation with the question.