How to Download Your Own PDFs from the InDesign Publish Online Dashboard

[hansa1976]

Hi,

I have several magazines on the server part of the Publish Online dashboard. I want to download some of these, but since I many times had upload problems from InDesign, where I had to turn off the downloadable option for readers, I can´t even seem to be able to download these from the dashboard myself.

Is this by design, that even I as the owner can´t download these PDFs from the dashboard? But if I can, could someone please explain how? Is there some trick to download them from the link perhaps?

I don´t mean when I open the magazine in view mode in a browser (there I can see the download option for some of the older magazines, but not for all of them)

I´ve been thinking this dashboard has me covered for a backup of these PDFs, but I need to be able to download them.

Appreciate any input.

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[Abhishek Rao]

Hello @hansa1976,

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your concern. I understand how important it is to have access to your published magazines. 

To assist you better, could you provide a bit more detail? Specifically:
- Which version of InDesign are you using?
- What operating system are you on?

- Have you selected the option to allow users to download your document in PDF print format? Please refer the reference article: Publish your InDesign documents online (https://adobe.ly/3SSJwuW)
- Could you also share a screen recording or screenshots showing your workflow and where you’re encountering the issue when trying to download the PDFs?

Regarding your question, the ability to download your own PDFs from the Publish Online dashboard should be available, but it seems like there might be an issue specific to your setup. In some cases, re-enabling the download option in the original InDesign document before republishing might help. 

We're here to help so please feel free to share any additional details.

Thank you,  
Abhishek Rao  

Publish your InDesign documents online (https://adobe.ly/3SSJwuW)

[Abhishek Rao]

Hello @hansa1976, 

I hope you are doing well.

We wanted to follow up on the status of your issue. Were you able to resolve the issue? If so, please share the solution that worked for you, as it may help others in the community experiencing a similar issue.

Feel free to update the discussion if you need any further assistance.

Thank you,

Abhishek Rao

[hansa1976]

Hi!

Thanks for trying to help out, but the most important for me was to download the PDFs that I own from the Dashboard. Too many times when I use Publish online for my magazines, I get an error at the 99% mark and the PDF fails to be published. There´s many posts about this problem.

So, I´m still not closer to a solution for these files that I already uploaded earlier, where I had to disable the download option before uploading/publishing online, so I can´t download these, my own files from the Dashboard. Which I just thinks is really bad by design.

For my really old magazines (PDFs with bleed and print marks), I´ve now resorted to crop them in Acrobat, which I eventually found to be really effective since it can crop multiple pages PDFs in one go (I made a youtube video showing this if someones interested).

I´m also fed up that Adobe can´t fix the problem that many have with this download option checked when they Publish online, so I´ve now purchased a flipbook subscription where I will upload all my old and new magazines, that will have a nice virtual bookcase with them all displayed next to eachother.

I will not wait more years for what seems easy for devs to fix.

Btw, I´m using Indesign 19.5.0.84 on Mac OS Sonoma 14.6.1.

I´ve tried turning on and off settings for presets for downloading/print. It fails on my magazines for a very long time, which forced me to publish without the download option for my readers, and appearantly not being able to download them from the Dashboard myself.

The worst is I can´t republish my old InDesign files because things happens over the years; fonts might be missing or made obsolete, graphics might be missing, some things just ain´t compatible any longer. I´ve loved using InDesign for many years, after starting out with Quark in the 90´s, but now I wonder if it´s all a bit overkill (although sometimes lacking) for the publishing I do.