JohnWhi Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 I had hoped the PDF import facility would allow me to edit the text therein. As a translator, I had received a PDF document for translation. I did the job by using Adobe PDF Export to convert it to Word and editing the language therein (also running it through my Computer Assisted Translation software). As an experiment, I tried importing it to Affinity Publisher. I would have liked to edit the text. Here, it came as a single uneditable image. Not much use to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capodastra Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 if you go to "LAYER - UNGROUP ALL" will that solve it? It dos for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter J G Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 I "Placed" an inDesign PDF into a page, selected the Frame Text Tool to edit it, and with a double click the image opened in another tab and I was able to edit the text in it. I immediately went back to see if the text had changed in my Original page and it had. And if you hit Layers as Capodastra mentioned you will also see each stage of the pdf file you created in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonBusing Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 The best way to import a pdf for editing in Affinity Publisher is to choose File>Open (cmd-O). Then the import dialogue appears with some useful options. If you drag and drop a file into an open document, the pdf will be placed as an imbedded document that is not directly editable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 1 hour ago, vonBusing said: If you drag and drop a file into an open document, the pdf will be placed as an imbedded document that is not directly editable. Not directly but it is still editable: double clicking opens it in a separate window where you can edit as you will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnWhi Posted September 25, 2018 Author Share Posted September 25, 2018 Thanks for the suggestions. It was imported using "Open". I have now tried another two times, once with the default option "Group lines of text into text frames", and again adding "Favour editable text over fidelity". Double clicking on the text only shows "Image 1653x2668 pixels" with the editing option "Replace image". The Layers option shows the page to consist of a single image; a text search for a word in the document gives no answer. It is possible to write text across the existing text, but not to edit it. PDF export to Word gave me three blocks of editable text and three images. I think it is a particular PDF that is at fault, as another large and complex one from an earlier job imported faultlessly into Publisher. The answer would probably have been to convert to Word, convert back to PDF, and start there. We live and learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnWhi Posted September 25, 2018 Author Share Posted September 25, 2018 Just to confirm that PDF -> Word -> PDF works perfectly, with all text editable and the images in the right place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonBusing Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 Could it be a scanned document saved as pdf? The Adobe tool might be able to perform an OCR in the Word export process and therefore offers editable text in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnWhi Posted September 25, 2018 Author Share Posted September 25, 2018 I am sure you are right. It was a death certificate. OCR was certainly involved somewhere, as an oblique date stamp had been converted to text. I never knew PDF Export was quite so clever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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