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casinclaire
casinclaire
Inspiring
August 30, 2021
Question

Imported PDF "insert" edits not working consistently

  • August 30, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 867 views

One of my clients is a book publisher. The editor annotates the PDF book layout, then returns the PDF to me to make the edits. She knows how to properly use Acrobat editing tools and is consistent in her usage. For the most part, our process works great. However, one weird and aggravating thing happens multiple times in almost every book we work on. When the Acrobat edits are imported into InDesign, some number of the "insert" edits will come in as "Accept" while others come in as "Resolve." The editor is using the same tool in Acrobat for all the inserts she marks. We've talked this over, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason why InDesign would import some inserts as "Accept" and others as "Resolve."

 

The edits flagged as "Resolve" do not show up with easy-to-spot blue symbols in the InDesign document, the way the ones with "Accept" show up.  Because of this, I have to closely follow every PDF I work with as I make corrections so that I have a visual of the page/para/line where these "Resolve" inserts are and can then find them in the corresponding place in the InDesign document. This slows down my work considerably. For instance, the book I'm working with right now has a total of 1,319 edits. The inserts that came in as "Resolve" are plentiful. I expect this will add at least several hours to the work.

 

Has anyone else had this experience? Do you know if there's a different way to mark Acrobat so this does not happen? Or is it a glitch that Adobe hasn't fixed??? Any thoughts or tips would be appreciated. 🙂

1 reply

J E L
Community Expert
J E LCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 30, 2021

@casinclaire This sounds like a mapping issue. For the correct mapping of comments, you have to make sure the InDesign document is not edited after creating the PDF for review. Are you continuing to work on your file while it's out with the publisher after you've generated the PDF? And wow, I can't help but comment that is a TON of edits for one book after the design phase is underway. The editor should have given you a much more finalized manuscript to work with. I feel for you!

casinclaire
casinclaireAuthor
Inspiring
August 30, 2021

Yep, thanks, I'm aware of not altering the InDesign doc before the matching PDF's edits are implemented. I promise I'm hands-off till I get edits back, LOL.  Too much other stuff to do.

 

I actually work with a great editor. This book was supposed to have been edited by someone else before we received it (apparently not a very thorough editor, someone the author was working with already), and after we got it and started looking at it, we saw myriad problems. The book contract doesn't call for editing, but the publisher can't let this go out the way it is, so we're taking on this editing job gratis. It's one of those "life's work" things and we just can't turn this author away or tell them to go back to the same editor who clearly didn't do a very good job to start with.

J E L
Community Expert
J E LCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 30, 2021

@casinclaire I completely understand as a developmental editor myself. Back to your issue, I sure don't know what is causing it exactly since it seems you are doing everything correctly. This could be a bug and it might have more to do with Acrobat than InDesign. What is your exact OS and are you using the latest v16.4? Are the comments being  sent back to you being made with Acrobat DC or another Acrobat version? 

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