• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit Search
18

Placing a multiple page PDF into InDesign

Community Beginner ,
Mar 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have CS5.  I'm working on a multipage document in InDesign and I want to bring in a multipage PDF document into that InDesign document.  For some reason, when I do File>Place, it brings in the first page of the PDF (with perfect formatting) but the other pages do not come in.  Is there some other setting that I'm missing to capture all pages of the PDF to transfer into the same number of pages in my InDesign document?

TOPICS
How to , Scripting

Views

539.2K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

Adobe Employee , Apr 30, 2021 Apr 30, 2021

Hi all,

 

See  (https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/place-a-multipage-pdf-in-indesign/td-p/11343293 )  for a consolidated list of scripts and solutions to place multipage PDF in InDesign. Try the solutions and let us know if you still need assistance.  

 

Regards,

Srishti

Votes

Translate

Translate
Community Expert ,
Mar 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

When you choose File > Place, in the Place dialog box, check Choose Import Options. Then you'll be presented with a screen where you can choose the pages to place.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Apr 05, 2020 Apr 05, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

thank you for the solution!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 04, 2023 Jan 04, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

Thank you thank you!!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Mar 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

GArshamA wrote:

[...]   Is there some other setting that I'm missing to capture all pages of the PDF to transfer into the same number of pages in my InDesign document?

No, there is no such option. Steve's suggestion does pop up a dialog so you can select page 2, page 3, etc. -- and even "all" -- but InDesign does not create the pages for you, as it does with text.

Use Scott Zanelli's script for this: http://indesignsecrets.com/zanelli-releases-multipageimporter-for-importing-both-pdf-and-indd-files....

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Enthusiast ,
Mar 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

there IS such an optionScreen shot 2012-03-22 at 3.11.37 PM.jpgScreen shot 2012-03-22 at 3.11.13 PM.jpg

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Mar 23, 2012 Mar 23, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Read the OP's question:

Is there some other setting that I'm missing to capture all pages of the PDF to transfer into the same number of pages in my InDesign document?

(my emphasis). Now please point out where you see that option in the dialog ...

Scott's script is the best way to do this.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Mar 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You can load your cursor with All Pages as shows above by tman, then just click to place... either in a frame or to margins (depends what you're doing I guess). Make sure you have set frame fitting options first.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 23, 2012 Mar 23, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

this question has been discussed to death on this forum... search the forum.

G

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Aug 02, 2014 Aug 02, 2014

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Is there no way to bring all pages in at one time or do I need to click 69 times if there are 69 pages?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Aug 03, 2014 Aug 03, 2014

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

There's a link to a script in response #2. Use it.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 09, 2015 Dec 09, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

To place multiple pages in Indesign effortlessly

Step 1: Go to file>>New>>Document, Fill in the number of pages and first page. (Do not mix up the number 

              of pages and the first page boxes). Also if you want single pages, uncheck the facing pages and   

               check the single page (make sure only one of these is checked)

Step 2: From Window (on the Tools Bar) go to Utilities>>Scripts

Step 3: In the appearing panel,Click Applications> then scripts>>then javascripts.

Step 4: Under javascripts scroll down to "placemultiplePDFpages and double-click it.

Step 5: In the appearing "choose File box" search for the pdf you want to place in Indesign and clck open.   

            You will see a message"place pdf in new document. Click OK, Followed by another OK( message

             Indesign document) and relax to enjoy watching the placement being done for you automatically. 

             You do not have even have to touch the mouse.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 09, 2015 Dec 09, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

To place multiple pages in Indesign effortlessly  (Using Applescript)

Step 1: Go to file>>New>>Document, Fill in the number of pages and  Start page. (Do not mix up the number 

              of pages and the Start page boxes). Also if you want single pages, uncheck the facing pages and   

               check the Primary Test Frame (make sure only one of these is checked)

Step 2: From Window (on the Tools Bar) go to Utilities>>Scripts

Step 3: In the appearing panel,Click Applications> then scripts>>then Applescripts

Step 4: Under Applescripots scroll down to "placemultipagePDF.applescript and double-click it.

Step 5: In the appearing "choose File box" search for the pdf you want to place in Indesign and clck open.   

            You will see a message"Place pdf " Start page (enter start page and Click OK,

             Relax to enjoy watching the placement being done for you automatically. 

             You do not  even have to touch the mouse.

           About using either the applescript or javascript: The applescript produced single pages, but the javascript 

           produced facing pages, even though the same settings were selected in Step 1. There might have been   

           some computer sensitivity.

A. A. Frempong

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Dec 09, 2015 Dec 09, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Scott Zanelli's script is the best option. Create a new doc with at least one page in it. Run the script (see link above), fill in the right settings (where to start, offset left or right, transparent background ...) and click run. I use it to place sometime 300 pages in to a file. takes me less that one minute.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Dec 10, 2015 Dec 10, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I agree with Gert here. While the placemultiplePDFpages script that ships with ID will perform the task, Scott Zanelli's script goes above and beyond, letting users:

  • place in logical or reverse page order;
  • Allow the PDFs (or INDD pages) to either fit to page or scale proportionally to a user-entered amount;
  • Choose the alignment point of the incoming files based on a 9-point proxy that can be rotated or offset;
  • Choose the desired area box to use (trim, media, crop, bleed, art)
  • Allows the incoming files to import onto their own layer

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guest
Mar 09, 2016 Mar 09, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you for explaining specifically why this is the superior method.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Mar 30, 2016 Mar 30, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

My fear is that an abode's customer relations or QA will read this thread and think to themselves "Well that problem is solved, no need to do anything about that" instead of "holy crap, this is a glaring omission from our software that is inconveniencing many and a couple of people have put together solutions in their bedrooms over a weekend why didn't we solve this 8 years ago?"

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 17, 2016 Mar 17, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you! Thank you! I used to do this in CS5 and hadn't been able to find it or figure it out in CS6. This will save me some time.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 21, 2016 Mar 21, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Perfect! I owe you an hour of my life that this would have taken me to do manually.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 21, 2016 Mar 21, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Zanelli's script is light-years better than the one that ships in the samples. Used it myself two days ago to do a 4-up layout of a quarter-page format directory.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Enthusiast ,
Sep 09, 2016 Sep 09, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

<Removed by Moderator>worte:

To place multiple pages in Indesign effortlessly

Step 1: Go to file>>New>>Document, Fill in the number of pages and first page.

Good one but Creating a New Document and fill pages this is ridiculous. Just open up the Script dialog box (Press Ctrl+Alt+F11) and choose "PlaceMultiPagesPDF"  and double click on it with no document open, no creating a new document.

Thanks

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 07, 2016 Dec 07, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Brilliant! Worked perfectly on a 136 page document.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 12, 2016 Dec 12, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

After placing the document in Indesign, using the script in Indesign, one can move a document in a page by pressing the mouse on the page and moving the mouse up, down, to the right or to the left. This action is especially useful when centering the document in the page, since after using the script not all the documents would be properly centered.

A. A. Frempong

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 14, 2016 Dec 14, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

From above, if on press-moving the mouse, the blank page and the placed material move together, you can do the following: 1. Click the selection tool (the white arrow) before press-moving the mouse in the page;

or  2. On the Mac, you can simultaneously press the command key while press-moving the mouse in the page (this option is more work)

AAF

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
May 01, 2018 May 01, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

That's freaking awesome. It even appended new pages to the end of the document so each page from the PDF would fit on a new page. Some minor moving about for layout, but that's merely because I didn't set the PDF pages to a specific scale first. Huge time saver.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines