Multiple artboards export problem

[ZRODLOSLOW13]

I noticed a strange thing in AD few years ago. It is not annoying, but just weird and I'm wondering if it's me doing something badly or there's a small bug.

To the point: when I create a new project of many artboards in AD and later than I try to export whole document into the 1 pdf file, the order of pages in pdf differs from the one in a project. For example, Artboard 2 is a Page 2 in pdf, but Artboard 7 is a Page 8 or Page 11 in a pdf. I noticed it usually happens in projects of 10+ artboards.

Is this a bug or just me doing something wrong with export?

[walt.farrell]

The Artboard names, and the layout of Artboards on the screen, is not relevant to the PDF export.

The page order is determined by the Layers panel. The bottom Artboard in the Layers panel is page 1. The next higher Artboard is page 2, etc., until finally the top Artboard is the last page in the PDF.

[ZRODLOSLOW13]

Thanks for a tip, Walt, I do appreciate that. I'll check it when I'm back home.

However, I'm pretty much sure that I always add Artboards in the order I expect to see in pdf (Artboard#1 - page 1, Artboard #5 - page 5, etc.), so I don't see any reason why their order in the Layers panel would be different.

[GarryP]

The chronological order in which you create Artboards may not be the order in which you want them to be exported, and since there’s no way to change the timestamp of when you created an Artboard, the user would be stuck with that order.

The position on the pasteboard at which you place Artboards may not be the order in which you want them to be exported. Who’s to say that everyone wants the ‘top row’ exported first, left to right, as opposed to the ‘left-most column’, top to bottom, for instance, and that doesn’t cover Artboard layouts which don’t conform to a grid.

Ordering the Artboards in the Layers Panel gives the user control over the order in which the Artboards are exported.

[ZRODLOSLOW13]

I got your point but, still, I thought there's no way to change the order as my order of adding new artboards is the same I expect to see in a PDF document. So, the first artboard is my 1st page, 2nd artboard is my desired 2nd page, etc. I have never changed the order in "Layers" panel, so it should reflect the order they have been added.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, ZRODLOSLOW13 said:

I got your point but, still, I thought there's no way to change the order as my order of adding new artboards is the same I expect to see in a PDF document. So, the first artboard is my 1st page, 2nd artboard is my desired 2nd page, etc. I have never changed the order in "Layers" panel, so it should reflect the order they have been added.

Without seeing your document, and what was exported, we can't tell. 

You should be able to look at the Layers panel, and the PDF you exported, and verify the order. I would be very surprised if the PDF pages are not in the same order as the Layers panel shows (bottom to top, pages 1 to n).

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, ZRODLOSLOW13 said:

I got your point but, still, I thought there's no way to change the order as my order of adding new artboards is the same I expect to see in a PDF document ...

You can also reorder pages afterwards in PDF files if needed, as for example with ...

• https://tools.pdf24.org/en/rearrange-pdf-pages

... there are a bunch such online- and desktop PDF tools available which offer that functionality.

[ZRODLOSLOW13]

Yeah, @v_kyr that's exactly what I do:

- export everything, artboard by artboard and merge them together in PDF24

- export it as a singl pdf, cut it down by PDF 24, and merge in different order.

[thomaso]

21 hours ago, ZRODLOSLOW13 said:

I have never changed the order in "Layers" panel, so it should reflect the order they have been added.

The order of a newly created artboard in the Layers Panel also depends on the layer position of a currently selected object during artboard creation, regardless whether you drag-create the artboard in the layout window or click-create the artboard via the button in the Context Toolbar. Only if none or an object of the top most artboard is selected then a new artboard gets created on top of the Layers Panel hierarchy – but always independent of its position in the layout window.

If you imagine the layout as x/y and the hierarchy in the Layers panel as z coordinate then only the z coordinates define the page order for export while the x/y coordinates define their appearance of their contents.