[Publisher] Data merge doesn't work correctly with PDFs, crops content outside of the trim box

[Blake_S]

If you attempt to data merge PDF files into an Image frame, it doesn't work correctly if PDF has a trim box defined - all content outside of the Trim Box gets cut.

Just to clear things up - Crop Box is used to define which areas of the PDF are cut out.
Trim Box defines the cut area for the physical blade cutting, after the document was printed.
The content between Trim Box and Crop Box, the bleed area, is supposed to be shown and printed.
However, AP cuts all the bleed area out, making it impossible to place a PDFs via Data Merge correctly without altering all of them.

Currently I have to delete trim box entirely for data merge to place PDFs correctly, but this shouldn't be required.

[Old Bruce]

5 hours ago, Blake_S said:

it doesn't work correctly if PDF has a trim box defined - all content outside of the Trim Box gets cut.

Crop Box shows me the Crop marks and, if included, the colour bars etc.

Trim Box shows me what is there after the trimming.

Are you wanting/needing the crop marks to show in the merged document?

[tudor]

17 hours ago, Blake_S said:

If you attempt to data merge PDF files into an Image frame, it doesn't work correctly if PDF has a trim box defined - all content outside of the Trim Box gets cut.

Publisher uses the Trim Box by default when placing PDF files. You can change this only after the PDFs have already been placed or merged.

[Blake_S]

11 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Are you wanting/needing the crop marks to show in the merged document?

No, I need the bleed area to be shown, since its for printing.

In fact, this is a constant headache for a printing house - clients sending files without a bleed area.

Without it, I can't print the resulting document, it can't be cut if everything outside of trim box is not printed.

[Blake_S]

1 hour ago, tudor said:

You can change this only after the PDFs have already been placed or merged.

This needs to be done before the data merge.
It is the difference between changing a setting once vs changing it a 1000, or 10000, or whatever number of times.

Suppose I have a thousand PDF files for data merge.

However, now I need to remove a Trim Box from all of them in order for AP data merge to not crop them incorrectly - I don't know any automated way to do that, so now AP can't be used for this task.

[Old Bruce]

Where are the thousands of PDFs from? I would ask the client to generate them to be 8 3/4 by 11 1/4 instead of 8 1/2 by 11 inches so the "bleed" area is now part of the Trim box. Then they get placed into a 8 3/4 by 11 1/4 picture frame that covers the bleed area on the 8 1/2 by 11 inch page.

[tudor]

There is a request here on the forums to allow changing the default page box settings for importing PDFs. That would surely help, but it's up to Affinity to fix this.

[Blake_S]

19 hours ago, tudor said:

for importing PDFs

Well that's a different setting. It won't affect the data merge.
 

20 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Where are the thousands of PDFs from? I would ask the client to generate them to be 8 3/4 by 11 1/4 instead of 8 1/2 by 11 inches so the "bleed" area is now part of the Trim box. Then they get placed into a 8 3/4 by 11 1/4 picture frame that covers the bleed area on the 8 1/2 by 11 inch page.

Unless there is no time to do that. And quite often out clients will be middlemen, so they would need to ask their client to fix the files.
At which point if asked repeatedly they might just decide to find another printing house that won't bother them to re-make the files every time.
And they would be right, since the PDF files they sent are correctly made. 
Its AP which places them incorrectly via data merge.

[tudor]

4 hours ago, Blake_S said:

Well that's a different setting. It won't affect the data merge.

Data merge is only an automated way to place those PDFs into the layout. Therefore, if there was an option to change the default page box when placing PDFs, it would also apply to data merge.