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InDesign output Alt pages into existing PDF
I am looking for a way to automate our proofing process. We publish magazines and go through many stages of alterations. What I’m trying to accomplish is our Art Department outputs one whole magazine to PDF. Then do their edits to any number of pages, export them and have them replace existing pages in the original PDF. Is this possible? Hope to hear good news and thanks!
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1 Reply
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The answer depends on how you have your workflow set up currently, and how much further you want to take it.
You can manually replace pages in a PDF with Acrobat. I can’t say that I would recommend it over re-outputting the entire PDF, though, it is more error-prone to update individual pages manually than re-PDFing the entire publication. One or two occasional pages in a pinch, maybe, but not as a workflow.
In any case, the manual method is described here:
https://creativepro.com/replacing-pdf-pages-with-adobe-acrobat/
If you’re looking for an automated solution, you could start here:
https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/inserting-pages-pdf-acrobat-javascript1
It will require more than that, though: you’ll have to make a script that recognizes what the pages are, deletes them from the existing file and then inserts the new pages (Perhaps you could come up with a naming convention that includes the page number or page range which would allow for automatic replacement of pages from a folder?). You probably want to keep the earlier versions of the master publication and change the name each time you update, in case something goes wrong, so that you can go back to an earlier version. And you’d want the individual pages to be moved out of the folder automatically after they’ve been inserted. None of this sounds too difficult, but you’ll likely need a programmer to accomplish it.
Depending on the size of the operation, if you’re using a full automated PDF preflight system such as Enfocus Pitstop Server, you can automate a lot of things at the PDF stage.
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