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• • January 12, 2017 at 6:52 pm #91226
    Robert Stocker

    Member

    I’m new to InDesign but I have watched several of David’s and Marie’s videos at Lynda.com, so I figured this was the place to get help with my problem. I am designing a monthly newspaper for a client and he wants to add a crossword puzzle to the paper. He builds his crossword puzzle with Crossword Weaver and has sent it to me in a PDF. While this should be simple, I’m struggling with it. I have not been able to figure out how to place the PDF into the newspaper layout and have it display correctly.

    The newspaper layout is 11.5 X 17 inches. I have four columns per page. The crossword puzzle PDF that I received is 8.5 X 11 and contains the clues at the bottom of the page. I do not want the puzzle to take up a full page in the newspaper layout; but that is the only way I can get it to display correctly.

    I bet this is going to be something really simple but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out. Please Help

    Robert

  • January 13, 2017 at 6:29 am #91231
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    When you say “that is the only way I can get it to display correctly,” what do you mean? What happens if you scale it down?

    If it’s a matter of needing to scale the puzzle and the clues differently, I suggest placing the PDF twice, scaling them differently, and then cropping out the parts you don’t need in each frame.

  • January 13, 2017 at 9:00 am #91243
    Jay Farschman

    Member

    Robert,

    I do an occasional crossword puzzle for out paper and we are the same dimensions and… I get a PDF from a third party. Actually, we subscribe to a service that builds one for $10/mo and I’d really rather build one based on vocabulary in our current edition. That’s another story. Here is what I do:

    1) CMD + D and place the PDF on the page
    2) Scale the puzzle (forget the clues for now) to however many columns you think works.
    I’m a 4 column paper and span the puzzle across 2 columns.
    3) Crop it down so you only see the puzzle and position it.
    4) Now…. grab your clues as text and place them as text and format them they way you want them.

    My crossword guy provides me with a PDF _AND_ a text document with the clues, but you could probably grab then with Acrobat.

    Hope this helps.

  • January 14, 2017 at 5:27 am #91250
    Robert Stocker

    Member

    Thanks David and Jay for your responses.

    David–by “display correctly” I did mean that it would not re-size correctly. When I shrunk it down, I would loose the “boxes” for a lot of the letters and you could not read the words.

    David and Jay–I never thought of placing (cropping) each section separately; I was too focused on placing the crossword with the clues as one document. I knew it would be something simple. Great idea. I’m going to do as Jay suggested and have my client send me the crossword in two files; a PDF and a txt file with the clues from now on.

    I also found a script that worked great to re-size on import @ (https://bit.ly/1cnHZyP).

    Thank you both again for your help

  • January 15, 2017 at 1:03 pm #91257
    Ari Singer

    Member

    Robert, just throwing in my two cents here.

    What do you mean that you ‘lose the boxes…’? Do you check the ‘Auto-Fit’ checkbox before scailng?

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