Designer: Insert PDF as embedded document: Editing of embedded document corrupts formatting of included TOC

[jörn-jören jörensön]

Designer 2.1.1 / Windows 10

I have an issue with inserting a PDF that contains a table of contents (which was generated by LibreOffice Writer).

When I open and view the PDF in any viewer, the TOC is formatted correctly with the page numbers on the very right and with dots filled in.
-> see attached test PDF (generated with LibreOffice Writer)

My goal is to get all pages of that PDF into my Designer document.

When I insert that PDF into my Designer document, I see the first page of the PDF and the formatting looks right. To get access to the other pages of the embedded PDF, I double click it and it opens in a new Designer tab, where I can see all pages of the PDF. I then select and copy all pages, to insert them back into my original Designer document. I then have all pages in my Designer document and so delete the embedded PDF from my Designer document.

This workflow works great (to get multiple page PDFs inserted) and usually all formatting etc. is kept perfectly.

Only one thing does not work as intended: The formatting of the TOC included in the PDF gets a bit corrupted, the dots are gone and the page numbers float behind the entries, instead being aligned to the very right.

I know, that this is quite nitpicky and I really appreciate, how amazingly well inserting of PDFs works apart from that. Anyway, I thought I report it.

Also, I now have to figure out a way to get a big bunch of such PDFs into Designer documents, without having to manually fix all the TOCs. : )


In short again, to reproduce:
+ Create a new Designer document
+ Drag (or Place...) my attached PDF into the document
+ Double click now embedded PDF to open/edit it in a new tab
+ See that the formatting of the TOC got destroyed

Thanks for eventually having a look at it!Designer-Test.pdf

[NathanC]

Hi @jörn-jören jörensön,

I think this is a by-product result of the App's PDF interpretation when opening Placed Embedded PDF files not including the 'Group Lines of text into text frames' option and as a result the TOC text is converted to individual art text frames and the majority of the original TOC formatting is lost in the process. Before double clicking to edit the PDF in a new tab, if you switch your PDF setting from 'Passthrough' to 'Interpret' this can be observed without the need to edit the PDF in a new tab.

Instead of opening the PDF via 'Edit Document'/ Double clicking after placing, I would instead recommend opening the PDF file directly via File > Open, this will prompt you with the PDF import options dialog, allowing you to enable the 'Group lines of text into text frames' setting, which is then preserving the TOC tabstop formatting correctly with the TOC text combined into a singular, manageable text frame which can then be copied back into your working document if required.

There is an outstanding improvement logged with the developers for the PDF Import options dialog to be added to placed PDFs which would prevent the need for the aforementioned workaround, so I'll bump it with your report.

[jörn-jören jörensön]

Hello @NathanC,

your solution worked!  : )

Thank you so much for taking the time to help! Saved me hours of work...

Love all 3 Affinity apps, love you guys, thanks again!