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rick6502

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 11, 2006
92
0
http://home.swbell.net/burn3deg/ebay/BarCodeProblem/15010_Proof%20Page.pdf
http://home.swbell.net/burn3deg/ebay/BarCodeProblem/15010_Proof%20Blank.pdf

A customer sent us some forms as PDFs to print. Customers always try to "help" us by putting marks on the pages indicating hole punching or cutting. We have to remove them prior to printing or we have to be dead on when doing both. I've done a lot of editing of PDFs using Acrobat. It's tedious, but sometimes that's the only way to get something done. These particular PDFs will not let you remove the hole and cut lines. In the interest of speed, we had to just cover up the holes in InDesign. But we are getting hundreds of these documents, and some will not be so easy to fix. In addition, my fix is very slow, as you will see.
After the rush, I imported the PDF into Illustrator. The holes don't appear. (No this wasn't a fix, too much font problems. Just a method to see what's going on.) When I place it into InDesign the holes are there. They also show in Preview.
I then used the Tools - Advanced Editing - Touch Up Object tool and selected all and deleted all. Then I had holes and a cut line. I saved the PDF and opened it as a text file.
What I found was this was some kind of ANNOT object. I assumed that meant Annotation. I then found that I could tell Acrobat to print the Document only, and they went away. This didn't help me with importing them into InDesign for layout purposes, but it told me where I'm going.
The end result, is that I can edit the PDF as a text file to delete the markups, but there's got to be a better way. I have looked on all of the show menu's but they don't go away.
Has anyone had experience with PDF Markups?
I have attached the documents. One as it came to me and one with everything deleted.
 

Blue Velvet

Moderator emeritus
Jul 4, 2004
21,929
265
I've had a look at the files and I see what you mean. Unfortunately, I can't offer any suggestions apart from insisting that your customers supply files to spec or face extra costs for additional time and bother.
 

rick6502

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 11, 2006
92
0
Preaching to the converted

Blue Velvet said:
I've had a look at the files and I see what you mean. Unfortunately, I can't offer any suggestions apart from insisting that your customers supply files to spec or face extra costs for additional time and bother.

Oh I so agree. The owner of my company doesn't understand that unless customers are informed of problems, they'll keep repeating them. He thinks that it's quicker for us to fix problems, then to have the customer do this. This is why most of my time is spent fixing problems.
 
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