Export issue: Placed interactive PDF then exporting entire doc to PDF links not maintained

[jdspain]

Hi, 

A little help would be appreciated on this work flow.

Open documnet.

Place PDF(command D) on page. Placed PDF is uilt with hyperlinks to external URL.  The links work in PDF viewer.

Export Indsign documment to interactive PDF with all indsign and placed pdf content. 

hyperlinks in palced PDFs will not work. Hyperlinks created in indesign work.

Goal is for many department heads to upload their PDF's to a server. Then the indesign projects grabs those and transfers all their work into the place holders withing indesign document limiting my work load and department heads display exactly what they want and how they want. 

Hope that makes sense, and appreacaite any help!

Cheers, 
Justin

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

A PDF placed in InDesign is treated as a single graphic.

The PDF's interactivity is ignored when the new composite PDF is exported: no hyperlinks, interactive buttons, accessibility tags, nothing. It's just a graphic in the final PDF.

[jdspain]

Thank you that clarifies it. any suggestions to conquer this work flow?

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Hi Justin,

As they say, "I feel your pain" about 2-3 times a week! You are not alone.

I logged a feature request to Adobe at https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/38850424-pl... and I hope you and others who see this post will visit it and vote for it. UserVoice is one way that Adobe listens to us users and builds the features we need.

But they need to see votes in order to put an idea onto their to-do list. So vote! And tell your colleagues to vote, too. If you can, add a comment at UserVoice to expand on what is started.

About workarounds...

If I read your workflow correctly, you're taking PDFs from your internal clients and incorporating them into a larger InDesign document. The final resulting PDF must retain all of the interactive features from both the InDesign portions and the placed PDFs.

In a way, you're nesting one document into another and you need the nested document to retain its live text and interactivity in the final composite PDF. This is tough to do given today's lack of InDesign options for placed PDFs.

Option 1: Place your client's live Word document rather than their PDF. You'll have to maintain the look and feel, but at least it keeps the hyperlinks live in the final PDF.

Option 2: You can slip a PDF into another PDF in Acrobat Pro and maintain all the interactive features and tags. In your workflow,

1. Make your portion of the document in InDesign.
2. Export to PDF and open it in Acrobat.
3. Open your client's PDF in a separate Acrobat window.
4. View both PDF's thumbnails panel.
5. Drag the page(es) from the client's thumbnail tab and drop them into the thumbnail tab of yours.

Hopefully one of these will work for you.

--Bevi Chagnon

[jdspain]

Thank you for taking the time! 

Option 2 is what I have been doing. Was hoping to just "update links" and be done. Getting closer. 

Option 1 I find when they place images and shapes and certain formatting it skews when imported and I end up fixing each one. PDF kept it a consistent look. But now I know it is one large image. 

I am actively passing on your vote link, and casted mine in favor already. 

Thank you again for the guidence. 

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

You're welcome. Glad to help.

And thanks for voting. It helps the entire community.

[Laubender]

Hi Bevi,

voted!

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[amaarora]

Hi,

Out of curosity I would like to know some things:

What all things would you like PDF to retain? (alt text, tags and what else?)

Currently when PDF is imported, its imported as a single graphic. 

@Bevi_Chagnon___PubCom: Would you want the tags and alt text to be mapped to thier correct assets in InDesign? and those tags and alt text be also editable from within InDesign after PDF is imported?

Or should they be remapped and restored once the document with placed PDF is again exported to PDF from InDesign? 

In either case, since PDF is one entity in itself, finding the objects and images and text components present within it can be challenging. (would totally become and "edit PDF" kind of a problem- since we will have to identify original frames and bounding boxes)

Otherwise how and where to map the tags? Similarly, how and where to map the alt texts? We can get the tags and alt text, but how to identify to what part of the PDF they belong to, since after import the placed PDF becomes a single figure

Would want to know more about the proposed solution / workflow

Thanks