New to Typophile? Accounts are free, and easy to set up.
.pdf to InDesign?
Posted by fredcastle in
4 Apr 2010 — 1:12pm
4 Apr 2010 — 1:12pm
I have a .pdf of a book I made a while ago [just text].
But I realized, I don't have the original InDesign file.
Is there a way to import this into InDesign, and have the text set up in text boxes with the current kerning and all that?
I can't figure it out, and illustrator is only giving me the text segmented.
User login
Support our Sponsors
4 Apr 2010 — 2:20pm
.. I can't figure it out ..
It's just one of those things -- for whatever reason, people believe it is (or, for up-and-coming versions, should be) possible to "read" or "open" or "import" a PDF into InDesign and get their original document back.
Can't do that -- it has been compared to reverting your hamburger into a cow.
You can always try Recosoft's PDF2ID, but mind you, this is not a 'conversion' back to InDesign, but rather an 'interpretation' that may or may not result in something like your original ID document.
[Ed.] And while the above may be true of your InDesign document, if you are only interested in the plain text, you can always try a "Save as .RTF" from within Acrobat Pro.
4 Apr 2010 — 3:16pm
Theuniis,
I love the way you say it... "Can't do that -- it has been compared to reverting your hamburger into a cow."
Cheers
4 Apr 2010 — 5:56pm
You could convert the pdf to a word .doc/.rtf file with one of the various tools out there, then reimport into ID.
8 Apr 2010 — 12:46am
theunis said:
> Can't do that -- it has been compared to
> reverting your hamburger into a cow.
it's true that you can't do it if you are using
the current standard tools and file-formats,
with a .pdf created with those current tools.
but with "better" tools and file-formats,
it's possible to "round-trip" your .pdfs...
that is, the text that you pull out of a .pdf
can -- with just a little minor massaging --
be used to create the very exact same .pdf.
the biggest problem with text from a .pdf
is that the paragraphing is lost. but it is
quite simple to write out an "empty" line
-- that is, a line with a "dummy" marker --
between paragraphs to retain that structure.
but it's just that most tools do not do that...
so, no, it's not really equivalent to turning
hamburger back into a cow. or at least it
doesn't _have_ to be that impossible...
-bowerbird