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• • July 30, 2015 at 5:36 am #77036
    Alesh Houdek

    Member

    (1) I create an InDesign document with a grid of text boxes.
    (2) Export as a pdf.
    (3) Select all the text in the PDF and copy to a text file.
    (4) The order of the text is completely scrambled!

    What can I do in InDesign to change the order of the text flow in the output PDF? I have tried (a) linking all the boxes with text-threads so the text flows (amazingly, that did not fix it!) and (b) re-arranging the order of the boxes in the Layers pallet. No help.

    I am tearing my hair out here. This layout is impossible to replicate with a single text box.

  • July 30, 2015 at 6:08 am #77037
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I believe (but am not entirely sure) that the numbering order is based on the order that you created the frames on the page. Try to copy and paste the frames in the right order.

    Another possibility: have tried the Articles panel?

  • July 30, 2015 at 6:22 am #77038
    Alesh Houdek

    Member

    Hi David,

    I’m not quite sure what I should be doing in the Articles panel. I have Article 1 with one item under it. I selected it and checked “User for Reading Order in Tagged PDF” on the panel menu(!) but that didn’t help.

    I guess I will try re-creating the document from scratch and being careful about the order I create the text boxes in. That seems like it should work. Crazy that having all the boxes threaded together isn’t preserved in the exported PDF tho!

    Thanks!

  • July 30, 2015 at 8:23 am #77043
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    When you export to PDF do you have Create Tagged PDF checked.

    Just a tidbit of information, Acrobat won’t display the text with the same logic that InDesign uses.

    Acrobat is given a reference location of x and y to insert each letter/sentence. If you have 4 text frames in InDesign all acrobat sees is a location to put those letters, nothing else.

    The two programs do not work the same at all.

    That being said, you could try using a table, or using one text frame with 2 or 3 or 4 columns.

    Create Tagged PDF should help though.

  • July 30, 2015 at 1:01 pm #77063
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    I’m not sure why you’re going this route to get the text that you put into an InDesign file out of it through a PDF, but here are some suggestions to try:

    Save As the PDF to either:
    -Microsoft Word (works best for me)
    -Rich Text file
    -Text (Plain)

    • July 30, 2015 at 2:27 pm #77066
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      I agree, Colleen. Personally, backing text out of a PDF is a royal pain in the butt, at least for me. Too much tweaking of the Word file that is created.

      I’m wondering why the OP just didn’t export as .rtf or something directly from the InDesign file.

    • August 3, 2015 at 2:03 pm #77123
      Alesh Houdek

      Member

      Hi Colleen,

      I’m sending the PDF to people, e.g. like a resume, where they’re likely to copy-paste the text into whatever text document they’ve got going. I need my file to be as bullet proof as possible.

  • July 31, 2015 at 12:25 am #77068
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Maybe they’re not the end user and the end user is requesting that certain text may be copied from a PDF at any stage by someone else.

    • July 31, 2015 at 1:26 pm #77075
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      That may be, Eugene. But from the OP’s initial description, it didn’t sound like it.

  • July 31, 2015 at 2:10 pm #77076
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I don’t know, I can only guess :)

    • July 31, 2015 at 2:26 pm #77078
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      I agree, Eugene. Maybe Alesh will post in this thread again and let us know.

      I know that a lot of end-users do export text or Word files out of PDFs. Personally I think it’s a nightmare.

      Have a good weekend.

  • August 4, 2015 at 4:52 am #77131
    Alesh Houdek

    Member

    (I’ve tried replying over and over, and it’s not posting. Now I’m going to try to re-phrase my entire email, maybe I am hitting some sort of deluded no-duplicate-post script?!)

    Yes, I want people who receive my email to be able to copy text from it. Need for it to be as easy and perfect for them as possible.

    I have tried creating the PDF in both Print and Interactive mode, with Tagged turned off and on, and even with the Tab Order (under Interactive) turned off and on. The PDF comes out the same in all cases, and text copied from it is in the same mis-order each time.

    I sure hope I have re-worded this enough that it will post. Thanks all for your suggestions!!

    • August 4, 2015 at 8:13 am #77132
      David Blatner

      Keymaster

      Looks like it posted this time, Alesh. If you have trouble again (if your post doesn’t appear within 1 or 2 minutes), then please just email us directly (see the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page) and tell us. Your posts all come in… but sometimes they get stuck, if our software thinks it is spam. (And I have NO idea why it thinks your comments are. Very strange.)

  • August 4, 2015 at 12:14 pm #77138
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    I suggest you send both a PDF and a Word .doc or .rtf, that way they have the design and live text.

  • August 17, 2015 at 6:23 am #77362
    Alesh Houdek

    Member

    “Dear Client/Potential employer/etc: Please see attachment A for my Super Fancy Layout, attachment B if you actually want to do anything with the content” does not seem like a winning proposition.

    I’ve tried the Table route. The good news is that tables do seem to give me the flexibility I need. The bad news is that the flow of text in the output PDF is _down_ the table columns first, rather than across table rows. Next experiment I guess is to create multiple tables, one for each horizontal section of the document. No fun, but at least I will bone up on my InDesign table manipulation skills.

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