Placing All the Pages of a PDF Inside InDesign
About a year ago, we discussed several options for importing multi-page PDF files into InDesign. Then, last autumn, I created a free video tutorial for MOGO Media that shows how you can import or export multi-page PDF files. In that video, I showed Scott Zanelli’s free Page Exporter Utility script for exporting PDF files as individual pages. [In that movie, I said I didn't know where you could find the script. Fortunately, Scott updated the script and we've posted it here.]
In the MOGO movie, I also showed a script that let you place multi-page PDF files into InDesign, one page a time. That script (PlaceMultipagePDF) was written by Olav Martin Kvern and ships free with InDesign. But today I just received a new Zanelli script, called PDFplacer, which does the same thing… but even better. (Ironically, Scott didn’t even realize Kvern’s script was available when he wrote this. He just knew he needed something to do this, so he wrote his own.)
Scott wrote about some things his PDFplacer.jsx script does that the PlaceMultiPagePDF.jsx script doesn’t do:
“…it allows the user to choose a page range from the PDF being placed, the crop type to use when placing, the page in the InDesign document to start placing on (adding new pages as needed), where to place it on the page (upper right, centered, etc., and using an optional offset), and whether to scale the PDF to the existing page size. If an InDesign doc isn’t open, it will read the size from the PDF and create a new InDesign document at the size of the PDF before placing the pages.”
Here’s a screen capture of the script’s main dialog box:
When I asked him if we could post the script for anyone to download, he said: Yes! So here it is, free. After you unzip the file, read the enclosed PDF file for more information about installation and use.
New 2.5 version (added March 2010)
Newest version, updated by Jim Birkenseer, which should work in CS3, CS4, and CS5.
I can’t guarantee it will work perfectly for you, but it seems to be working great for me so far. It’s so great to automate this stuff. Thank you Scott!
Does anyone know of a script to place all the pages of an InDesign file inside another InDesign file?
Cool script. Thanks for sharing, again I’ll pass it on and give the necessary credit. Thanks guys!
Surely the PDF script can be altered somehow to put in the .indd file? Surely, and find/replacing pdf with indd doesn’t work, I already tried that. I’ll get there some day, when I get a chance to sit down at it properly. Someday.
Yeah! another fabulous script by Scott. Thanks for sharing it.
guys, would someone be so kind as to post up a link to the unzipped file/s?
my work server blocks downloads of .zip files.
many thanks in advance…
ps – i’m an InDesign newbie, mad keen to learn – thanks for this great site!
Horseyboy, I’ve saved the files into a gzip tar archive… can
you download this file? Do many other people have trouble with zip files these days? What is the best alternative?ZIP is only a problem for paranoid server guys.
Since this is JavaScript, a plain-text listing in HTML/TXT would serve just as well to overcome the paranoia — you must then choose to save the file with a .JSX extension.
Actually, the problem here is that it’s not just a jsx file. It’s a folder with a jsx file, two text files, and a PDF. I was trying to figure out how to bundle it all up into one download.
I read before somewhere recently where you could put a zip/compressed folder inside a jpeg, you can view the jpg as normal, but you can also unzip it to a folder using the contextual menu. Sounds cool, haven’t tried it.
David, many thanks for trying…but that file is blocked too (our IT dept do not hold truck with us having different needs to the normal pen-pushers in our organisation – access to all sorts of useful content is blocked).
thanks for trying anyway – i’ll keep checking back to see if there are other ideas – but i guess it’s a problem i’m going to have grabbing any of the goodies you post here.
apologies for any hassle & thanks anyway for the brilliant free advice on this site
Good idea, Eugene! Replacing the .ZIP extension with any “acceptable” extension would probably work fine. Simply replacing the false extension with .ZIP should make the file function like normal.
Hey, I just tried this now, from my own server, and it works fine as long as you choose “Save As” and don’t Open the fake filetype.
Okay, then, right-click on this link, choose Save Target As (or whatever your browser uses), then change the downloaded file from .zap to .zip.
The fake extension thing works great. We get e-mail with a .dat (still don’t know why, but now I don’t care) I just change the .dat to .doc or .pdf and try until I get the right extension. Works all the time. (knock on wood)
SUCCESS! thanks david (any everyone for stting the gears in motion!). does this mean i have to ’special request’ downloads from you in future?
Great tip David! I love MOGO, too!
horseboy, you have just met the wonderful world of indesigners! this is just the way things are…helpful, friendly, funny, and extraordinarily talented. I’m glad I found them, too!
Slight procedural improvement:
“MyFile.ChangeThisToOnlyZIP”
I don’t know the limit, but extensions are certainly not limited anymore to those measly 3-4 characters.
Yes but klaus, adding extra characters to the file name makes the file bigger! You don’t want to fill your magnetic tape with a file name with more than 3 characters in the extension.
Eugene, you got me — I fold!
Chris, the .dat files may be from it being sent from a Mac to your PC, and as there’s no extension, Windows adds the dat. I got one of those today. I do the same thing, try a couple of extensions and see what works. If I’m not getting very far, I change it to .txt, open the file in a text editor and see whether the first few lines might tell me more about what the actual file type is.
Got to use this script the other day for a 192 page pdf. Worked fantastically. Saved a lot of time and things like that. So thanks a million. It’s great.
This script is great. It helps me do what i’ve been trying to do for a long time, which is use indesign CS3s booklet imposing function and then place that PDF onto another document in order to combine saddle-stitched booklets to be trimmed later.
If there is an easier way to do this? Please let me know.
This is brilliant. Saves me so much time. Great site, guys. Thanks.
Ok, I’ve tried everything and I can’t figure out how to work this script. I have CS2 and I can’t even get the script installed, HELP PLEASE!
See folio page 3 of the manual. It shows what folder to place the .jsx file into.
If you are having other problems, email me via the address given on the copyright page in the manual.
Ok this is a fgreat application. Very glad you posted it.
This is a great script, but I need it to do a bit more (of course!). I need it to place 514 pages into a InD doc, resized to 92%, but then offset each page by 24 pts. from the gutter of facing pages (not single page). Currently, the script cannot fit to page and offset from the gutter. I was hoping to have the art placed into a graphic box that is already on my page. Any suggestions of alternative scripts?
Hi,I just came across an article on Scott Zanelli which I thought you might like to share with others.<a xhref=”http://www.cs.umb.edu/www/news_and_events/announcements/29/” mce_href=”http://www.cs.umb.edu/www/news_and_events/announcements/29/” rel=”nofollow”>Scott Zanelli Wins Award for Excellence in Software Engineering
</a>Posted On: April 07, 2008The Computer Science Alumni/ae Award for Excellence in Software Engineering is awarded annually to a graduating bachelor’s degree student in Computer Science who has an outstanding academic record. I’m happy to tell you that this year the winner of the Alumni/ae Award is Scott Zanelli.Scott is graduating with a BS in Computer Science in Spring 2008 with near perfect GPAs of 3.907 overall and 3.889 in the major. Before coming to UMB, Scott worked as a desktop publisher. While on the job, he learned to write programs to automate repetitive tasks. Eventually, he decided to turn his programming “hobby” into a career and began taking classes at UMB on a part-time basis. After completing half his major, he combined his newfound knowledge from his classes with his desktop publishing experience and created several freeware programs for printing companies. One of these programs has been downloaded over 2500 times from the Adobe Systems website.In addition to his academic excellence, Scott has distinguished himself by his helpfulness. He is always willing to assist students in the computer lab who are having trouble with their projects. He is a very active participant in online class discussion forums, and has been an informal mentor to students.After graduation, he plans to work in the software industry for at least a year and then pursue his Master’s degree. The Department of Computer Science congratulates Scott on his achievements and extends its best wishes for his future career.http://www.cs.umb.edu/www/news_and_events/announcements/29/
nice.
I am also looking for a script like this, but instead of PDF, placing pages from an INDD into another INDD. I’ve searched and searched and don’t know enough about scripting to modify this one myself.
Any ideas?
Sean, Scott tells me that he has updated the script to work with INDD files (and add some other features). I hope to post the new version soon! Hold tight…
Hmmm…. tried on a Mac and PC with CS3, and didn’t have the success I hoped. No matter which PDF I chose, it said that it couldn’t detemine the number of pages in the PDF, even after resaving in Acrobat 8 or 7. I’ll reload CS2 at some point and see if I have better luck…
Can the script be modified to insert pages from one file into another to produce an interleaved merged document?
Although my purpose is different, this would be needed by some one scanning documents with a non duplexing scanner to merge the scanned pages into one pdf.
Thanks,
Al
Dave Saunders has kindly posted a terrific script in the InDesign Scripting forum that does exactly what I needed:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.3bbf275d.59b6e8cc/8
Al
Great script .
Thanks
Is there a modification to make the PDFs place into an image box on the master page?
Note to those who had trouble where the script errored saying it could not determine the number of pages, I had this problem with the PDF I wanted to work with. However, I had no such problem when I opened another PDF. So there’s something about the way the PDF is saved that must make it work or not work with this script. If someone wants to experiment, perhaps they’ll find what makes this error happen and not happen.
At first it appeared the same error (About determining the number of pages), but I just went into the PDF and saved it, and I didn’t get the error again.
But…!
It still doesn’t go, as it freezes the application!!! I tried multiple times in CS3 and in CS4 to no avail!
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Sorry, I take back my words. Apparently the reason why it froze is due to a very heavy PDF file. I reduced it to approx. 1 MB, and it doesn’t freeze anymore.
But…!
It still doesn’t go, as the same dialog “Cannot determine page count” doesn’t want to leave me live a life!
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Got exactly that same problem of “Cannot determine page count” even after a resave from Acrobat 9 Pro. Using InD CS4 Standard. Could that be that my version is Czech only? Other foreign language scripts work alright. Thanks for help. Will be really appreciated.
@ Daniel
Problem with “ERROR: Cannot determine page count” in Acrobat 9 – just write as optimized pdf (in Acrobat 9) to Acrobat version 4 or 5. It’s work in CS3 Standard – Polish version.
With Acrobat 9, the default is to compress the document structure. Because of this, the script is unable to find certain internal keywords that it uses to determine the page count. (Any version past and including Acrobat 6 has this capability [PDF version 1.5+]).
Right now, the only way to get Acrobat 9 PDFs to correctly work with this script is to set your distiller settings to have the ‘Object Level Compression’ NOT set to ‘Maximum’.
If any PDF is saved from Acrobat 9, the Maximum setting is “reinstated”. I poked around the prefs, but didn’t see if there was a way to override this. Using the PDF Optimizer menu item, you can set the ‘Object compression options’ dropdown menu to be ‘Compress document structure’ and it will make the resulting PDF usable in the script. Just be aware that saving/optimizing has the chance of wrecking havoc with transparency and/or trapping layers (at least it did in my jaded printing days of yore).
As far as updating the script to handle the compressed structure, I am looking into it. At the moment I don’t hold high hopes since there is decompression involved and unless there is a way to access this type of feature via an InDesign API call (if that lingo means anything to anyone), a fix may not be possible (at least to the measures I’m willing to partake).
cool script, THX!
Help, I am new to scripts. I copied the file to the folder. Now what, how do I “launch the script” in INDD? Do I need to open a new document first? How do you initiate the script?
@Beth: Check out this post.
Any news about the version that is capable of placing indesign-files?
Is it possible to get the script to place two copies of each page next to each other, on the same page in the new document?
@Kenneth: Not with this. It sounds like what you want is imposition software. Search site for imposition, or ask on the indesignsecrets.com/forums what the best imposition software out there these days. I’m curious!
The script has caused my InDesign (CS4) to crash twice after selecting the file to place.
The link shared here only lets ou download a utility that works with the Indesign CS2 andCS3 but what about combing multiple PDFs and placing them up in Indesign CS4… using PDF placer ?
Any help would be appreciated…
I placed it in the scripts folder for CS4 – even though the manual only referenced cs3. Not sure how to get it to run from INDD CS4.
When I double-clicked on the .lsx file, it launched a java editor.
While ID CS4 will place multi-page PDFs when holding the option key, still needing to click once per page to place that page’s PDF on that page, and then on to the net, is insane.
I’m trying to place a 50-page PDF! 50 clicks, and it does not respect the layou and margins! Even Apple Preview does that!
InDesign should simply open the PDF document, adjust (or create) layout for the page dimensions of the PDF, and put 1 PDF page per InDesign page from ALL or the Range of pages in the PDF (selected).
Goodness!
Scott Z. updated the Multi Page Importer script to deal with some bugs and Acrobat 9 and other issues. I upated the links in the post above. More here:
http://indesignsecrets.com/zanelli-releases-multipageimporter-for-importing-both-pdf-and-indd-files.php
This script has changed my life!!! Importing 400+ page documents would have been a laborious task were it not for this script.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for the updated MultiPageImporter script! We haven’t had a new technical manual since I updated to Acrobat 9 last year and today I found my script wasn’t working! Thankfully there was a solution here already.
PS: We use this script to prepare print files for our internal print service. The final books will be 1/2 letter size, but it is more cost effective to print on tabloid paper, so I place each page 4-times on a tabloid INDD page and make a PDF of the final “print file” for our bindery to make more books. This script is the perfect answer.
Thank you!
this script is very use full to me but, it’s not working on indesign cs5
The MultipageImporter 2.5 works great with ID CS4. Thank you so much!!!! From now on I go on with ID CS5 and unfortunately the script in CS5 shows teh following error:
Error Number: 55
Error string:Object does not support the property or method ‘cropContent’
Engine main
File: /Applications/Adobe InDesign CS5/Scripts/Scripts Panel/Samples/JavaScript/MultiPageimporter2.5.jsx Line: 124
someone has an idea how to correct the script to run for CS5. I really would be happy to renew it.
Anne
Just find the mistake and fixed the
MultipageImporter 2.5 for ready for work on ID CS5:
Delete (in teh script) in line 124: “PDFCrop.cropContent, ”
And it works fine with ID CS5.
Thanks for the script!!!!!
Anne, it seems this property changed from one single setting to two:
PDFCrop.CROP_CONTENT_VISIBLE_LAYERS
PDFCrop.CROP_CONTENT_ALL_LAYERS
– and you should pick one.
(I must admit I’m a bit surprised Scott used this “Crop contents” option. I would have expected CROP_MEDIA, so you are assured to get the entire page, white space around and all.)
All praise to Zanelli and the good people at IDSecrets!
Thank you!!
Did not work for me it gives me a error every time I am running indesign cs5
Mario, did you read the follow-up posts? Four messages up, Anne already said it doesn’t work with CS5; and 3 messages up, Anne describes how she fixed it herself.
Follow-up posts are important: they may contain corrections, additions, criticism, personal experiences, trouble-shooting tips, and updates to a blog post.
Hi,
I think Ken asked this before. I cannot place a multipage pdf into individual frames. I have a doc with an fpo pdf frames on different spreads, and I want to be able to select each frame and replace the fpo pdf with the pdf in the loaded cursor. (I have unlocked the frames and detached them from the master). Instead ID CS3 places the pdf on the page instead of inside the graphic frame.
I can place each pdf individually by selecting the frame then importing each page of the multipage pdf one at a time. This is slow.
Wondering why I can’t do this when the help files indicates you can. Thanks.
Anne,
Thanks for the script revision you posted. I was able to use this method to update my own copy of the script and it now works beautifully with CS5!
You saved the day for me, thanks,
Grace
The new 2.5 version is gone missing. Can you please place it again? Thanks!
LGFN & David: the correct link for the 3.5 version is http://indesignsecrets.com/downloads/MultiPageImporter2_5.zip
There was an oops in the link.
I have cs5 and changed line 124 with the deleted crop content. However I am trying to import a 434 page pdf and “Import Pages” only goes from 1 to 2 and I cannot change the page higher than 2. Any suggestions?
Thanks Amanda! But why not change the link in the article to the new one?
I wonder if Carla’s 2 page importation problem is tied to the problem in Bridge of pdfs created in CS5 displaying only two pages, mentioned in the Known Issues thread?
Was the pdf generated by CS5? The Bridge problems that have been flagged here were on Windows 7 64-bit OS machines. It would be useful to find commonalities in these problems.
The pdfs were created in Excel in Windows XP system on a PC. Then given to me (who is a MAC user) and was getting the issue with the pages not going higher than 2. I thought the problem might be that I didn’t have enough pages in the Indesign File so I created 424 pages and have the same issue.
I have InDesign CS3 ME (Middle Eastern) edition, and I tried the script on a right-to-left document with spreads (facing pages), and every right page of each spread got its correct page but along with the next page — that’s supposed to be on it’s left side — overlapping it.
Is it at all possible that the script should be ME friendly?
Thank you!
P.S. I tried the script on another document with the same scenario, just using the regular left-to-right settings, and all went just well.
@LGFN: I’m sorry, but it is very unlikely that this free script will work in the ME version. You could probably hire a scripter to modify it to work.
Okay, I think I figured out a very simple and relatively quick solution way for my problem (with placing the PDF pages in an ME right-to-left document):
At first I started out with a regular left-to-right document, and after I ran the script I went to Layout -> Reverse Layout (I use CS3), made sure the right-to-left binding is pressed, unselected everything in the dialog (I didn’t experiment much with this dialog, but it worked this way), and pressed OK, and presto! Everything on it’s proper place right-to-left!
I have CS5 and keep getting error message about not supporting crop content. How can I fix this ?
Geof: this has been mentioned, and then a solution is offered, in the posts above.
Follow-up posts are important …
Awesome script! Saved my a$$ and lots of time. Thanks for the good work.
Ed Johnson
Thanx Anne! Good call with the script fix.
And thanx Scott! You just saved me a day or more’s work.
Will Scott be adding odd & even page selections when importing pdf files into InDesign?
thanks for the fix or update of the script ! works great.
Hi Folks,
With regards to the CS5 “Line 124/PDFCrop issue” mentioned earlier in the messages, I have created (what I think to be) a proper fix. The fix will allow the script to run properly on CS3, CS4, and CS5.
NOTE: The first time you run this script after making the change, make sure that the “Crop to” setting is set to what you want.
Here’s what to do:
Replace lines 124 and 125 with the following lines of code:
// Premedia Systems/JJB Edit Start - 02/14/11 Modified PDFCrop constants to support ID CS3 through CS5 PDFCrop Types.
if (appVersion > 6)
{
// CS5 or newer
var cropTypes = [PDFCrop.cropPDF, PDFCrop.cropArt, PDFCrop.cropTrim, PDFCrop.cropBleed, PDFCrop.cropMedia, PDFCrop.cropContentAllLayers, PDFCrop.cropContentVisibleLayers];
var cropStrings = ["Crop","Art","Trim","Bleed", "Media","All Layers Bounding Box","Visible Layers Bounding Box"];
}
else
{
// CS3 or CS4
var cropTypes = [PDFCrop.cropContent, PDFCrop.cropArt, PDFCrop.cropPDF, PDFCrop.cropTrim, PDFCrop.cropBleed, PDFCrop.cropMedia];
var cropStrings = ["Bounding Box","Art","Crop","Trim","Bleed", "Media"];
}
// Premedia Systems/JJB Edit End
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. You can find my email address here.
Cheers!
– Jim
Thank you, Jim! I have added your version to the blog post above, so even people who aren’t reading the follow-up comments (sigh) will find it.
I have not been able to get the script to run with CS5.
I downloaded the script for CS5, unzipped it, put it into the script folder, and tried to run it and it won’t run.
I have never used scripts before and this is the only one in the folder but I have a 300 page .pdf that I need in Indesign and cannot after hours of trying gotten it to work.
Frustrated in Madsion,
Thanks for any help.
I am using Indesign CS5 on a PC. I could not get the script to run at all. I get tthe following error message: Java Script eror. Object does not support the propery or method ‘cropContent’
I was looking for a script like this, and saw the solutions to get the script working in InDesign CS5. They ask you to modify the script, but there is a much simpler solution.
InDesign supports Versioning for scripts. The scripts interpreter for InDesign has changed over time. but older versions are still supported. To get this script running in InDesign CS5, you need to put it in a folder named “Version 6.0 Scripts” inside the User scripts folder. To get to the User Scripts folder , Ctrl-click or Right mouse click the folder in the InDesign Scripts panel. Create the Version 6.0 Scripts folder there and put this script inside it.
From within InDesign run the script from this folder and it will use the 6.0 version of the script engine and work without a problem. This works with older scripts made for older versions of InDesign too. The only difference is that the folder name has to match the version of InDesign that the script was made for. To know the version select: About InDesign. CS5 is 7.0 (the updated version is 7.0.3). So CS4 is version 6 etc.
For me this works for most of the older scripts that give errors in the current version. I try the scripts in different version folders, but sometimes it does not work. In that case contact the writer of the script (or give it up).
Ton
thanks!
Thanks! What a time saver.
Thanks SOOO much! This just saved 3 days of my life!
This script save me hours of work. Thanks for this! It works perfectly!!
I’m afraid the latest script file -the last listed in the download part of the post -doesn’t seem to work on my PC or Mac version of CS5. I get the No crop to type in pdf error. Could someone post a version that does work with CS5?
Nice! Thanks for sharing.
I wanted to chime in and say I’m using the latest version with CS4 and it’s awesome. Also, I second the request for adding the ability to place odd/even pages of an InDesign doc. That would be even more awesome. Thanks!
I’m trying to place a 100 page PDF but not in 50 clicks, and it does not respect the layout and margins also. If there is some option to place all 50 pages in one click in indesign.
@Mohammad: I think this blog post (above) is exactly what you are asking about, no? When you say it does not respect the layout and margins, perhaps you need to choose a different setting for the Crop To pop-up menu?
I just noticed a certain situation where this script may cause problems if not noticed. That is, I have a file with two sections, the first few pages I renumbered with a prefix of A, then I started from 1 with regular numbers. It took some time till I finally noticed why this script keeps on placing the PDFs a few pages back of what I have written in the dialog, till I realized that it ignores sections and just goes according to the original page numbers.
Huge Thank you to David for posting this and Scott for creating these scripts! The update for CS5 works great for me. The Multi Page Importer script saves me a lot of time, especially when clients provide couple hundred page word docs that I need to PDF and print from InDesign with crops. Amazing how much time and work can be saved! THANKS A MILLION
This is a reply @ John in the April 6th post who remarks stating “I get the No crop to type in pdf error. ” I got that too when I clicked on the link for the MultiPageImporter2_5.zip, which is the CS3 version only. You have to click on the one that downloads the zip MultiPageImporter2.5JJB.jsx.zip, as this is the updated one. If you place this into your Scripts Panel of your Mac, you should be able to just click on it in InDesign and it should work!
THANK. YOU. I have a 766-page PDF document, plus another 200-page PDF document, needing to be combined in InDesign, re-branded, and re-paginated. I hope The Man In The Sky blesses you with a Mountain Dew I.V. and lots and lots of snack foods.
Ballons and Unicorns,
Lacey
thanks!!
I’m looking for a script that does just this except that I need to place a folder of single page PDFs into Indesign. Unfortunately, combining them all into one file isn’t an option – can anybody recommend a script, or a modification of one?
Thank you!!
hello
I’m noob in Indesign and I don not know how to use this scripts. can you help me and give me some instructions?
thank you!
@ Akaki, have a look here: http://indesignsecrets.com/how-to-install-scripts-in-indesign.php
I did a simple and quick script to handle this from another point of view. You just need to select an existing sample frame and launch the script to place every PDF document’s pages one for every InDesign page.
If you want to test it please drop me a mail.
I’m sorry, it does sound good, but I’m a bit slow here, would you mind to expand a bit on the description of your script?
Thank you!
Amazing script. Saves me tons of time on this 280 page catalog.
Brilliant script works perfectly.
Love the script. I have been trying to import some larger files and get an “Indesign has encountered and error” at 334 pages. I am running Windows 7 and using CS5. I have tried three different PC’s and multiple different files. Has anybody else seen this error and found a solution?
Thanks
Dave
This works great, Thank you so much for posting the script. Again many many thanks.
Hello David or others–
This is a great script, but how do I edit the text after flowing the PDF document into InDesign?
I’ve tried applying a text box to the master page but that just lets you edit on top of the original document.
Any suggestions?
@Ken: InDesign doesn’t allow editing of PDF files. It’s a page-layout program. You could edit them in Acrobat Pro, or Illustrator, or use PDF2ID (from recosoft.com) to convert the PDF into an editable InDesign file.
Awesome script!
Thank you so much for sharing the script.
Hi there, Thanks for this awesome script. I had a 407 page pdf of various A4 & Letter sized pages that I needed to place into an InDesign doc to make sure they all fitted inside a standardised A4 template. This script was a life saver, I didn’t need to manually re-size a single page. Brilliant.
Wow what a time saver this turned out to be. Thank you so much!
This is the best thing ever!!! It just saved me hours of work!
Thank you very much for this. Saved me hours of work.
[...] PDFplacer Places all the pages of a PDFinside InDesign [...]
Hi everybody,
When I discovered this script I was so releaved because it is supposed to do exactly what I need for a 576 pages document. Unfortunately, after many trials of corretions as proposed in the previous posts, it is not working at all in my case! I am working with Indesign CS3 and CS5 on Windows (apparently the scripts consider only the CS3 as the app.version value is 3). The first error message is on line 34 that app.scriptPreferences.userInteractionLevel is undefined (undefined is not an object). Then, if I skip that message, on line 136, I get the message that PDFCrop is not defined. I was not able to pursue further to get the amazing results expected by this wonderfull script. May anyone help me?
Thanks…
Thanks so much for this. worked a treat. (Using Cs5)
Stephen McEwan.
Thank you very much! It was/is a lifesaver!
wow, thanks! perfect!
So into what folder does this script go? Loose in the Scripts folder, or one of the sub-folders? And then under what menu in InDesign do you access it?
I need to place a 300+ page PDF that is 8 1/2 x 11 into an InDesign doc that is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, and have the PDF pages scale proportionately to the smaller size. I cannot find a script or plug-in anywhere that will do this….can anyone help?
My many thanks in advance!
This script works amazing, and saved me countless hours of unnecessary labor. Really awesome!
Well, usually. All goes smooth until you notice, after importing hundreds of pages, that you mistakenly set it to the wrong setting. The relatively calm and organized workflow from hereon goes haywire! The problem: You got to hold down ctrl+z for the longest time to undo every bit of change the script has done to the document, and that is possibly five command per page! And then leave off at the exact right second, so it shouldn’t undo too much. Now, where have I left off? Did I make an undo too much? Too few?
Is there any way to make this script have a single undo command, to undo everything as if I have never run it in the first place?
With great appreciation!
I’ve come up with a temporary solution, import everything automatically to a new layer, and if there’s any mistake just delete the layer and your back to square one. Simple. Maybe this can be a permanent solution, too. Maybe…
Excellent script! Thanks so much! It worked perfectly on CS5. I copied the .jsx file into: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS5\Scripts\Scripts Panel\Samples\JavaScript
… and the function showed up in my Windows >> Utilities >> Scripts panel just fine. I just double-clicked on PlaceMultipagePDF.jsx and it gave me the pop-up window so I could type in the specific criteria… beautiful! Thanks!
How I can fit the images to the margins, not to the page?
[...] Placing All the Pages of a PDF Inside InDesign [...]
This saved me SO much time, thank you!
This just saved me hours of time. THANK YOU so much!
…or you could just click the ‘Show import options’, button when you go to place the image.
No script needed at all!
The Matt, when you select that in “show import options” you get all pages ‘loaded’ in your cursor and you still have to place them one at a time. The script does that for you, always at the right size and the right position, for any number of pages. You still can’t beat that doing by hand.
Many thanks for the updated script! I had the original version which I used in CS2 but it didn’t work when I upgraded to CS5. The new version works a treat!