Expert: Amy - 2/19/2004

Question
I am on a Mac G5, using OS 10.2.8. I want to save a file as a mutlipage PDF document for my service bureau. I have tiled the 7 x 8.5 pages on one artboard. When I save as a PDF it creates a one page file. I think I need to use distiller, but I'm not sure how. My G5 seems to have Distiller 1.0. Do I need to upgrade? Help!

Answer
Hi Thomas,

Yes, you need to use Distiller... but Distiller is a component of Acrobat, which is really the software that you need. 1.0 is a very old version number for Distiller and it is possible to have Distiller on your machine and not have the full version of Acrobat, so I hope you have everything installed that you need. Open your Chooser and look for Acrobat or PDFWriter or something similar. Also, look for the Adobe Acrobat application (not the same as Acrobat Reader).

If you *do* have Acrobat installed, you can just as easily Save each Illustrator page to a separate PDF file and fuse them together using Acrobat.

To print multiple-page PDF files from Illustrator, provided you do have the software installed, choose File > Print and select PDF Writer/Acrobat as your printer.  If you don't see it, you don't have what you need to complete the job, unfortunately.

If is *is* installed correctly, it will prompt you to name your PDF file at this point. And that's all there is.

To set the compression options, I believe you have to launch the Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat reader) application and go to Tools > Distiller. Or you can choose the PDFwriter from the chooser and set the compression options there....maybe not in that old version, though.

Forgive me if this is a little vague, it's been awhile since I've done it that way.  I use a $49 plug-in from hotdoor. http://www.hotdoor.com/multipage/ If you are going to be doing a lot of this, I encourage you to look into it.  It's a lot cheaper than buying the Acrobat package.

Good luck!
Amy