Expert: Ken Black - 9/3/2008

Question
Ken,

I need to export a document i've created in Indesign CS3 to any editable
format in Illustrator. When i do the PDF file each word in the document
became one text box in Illustrator. And all the alements became a sigle
group that most of the times can't be ungroup.

Answer
Federico,

You could export the document as an .eps and then bring it into Illustrator or use the .pdf and this Concate Text script written by Rick Johnson. It will put all the adjoining text boxes into a single text box for you.

Find it here - http://rj-graffix.com/software/scripts.html

It is not so much that the elements cannot be un-grouped, they are all contained within several clipping masks.

You can remove them by drawing a selection at the edge of the document, away from any elements, and choosing edit -> clipping mask -> remove clipping mask. You will need to do this several times as there will be a mask for every element. Carefully watch your document for anything that may accidentally be deleted. You may also have some compound paths that were created during the import. To remove these make a similar selection as before and select edit -> compound paths -> remove compound path. Again watch things carefully, text that was knocking out of a solid or image (white text on colored background) may already be outlines and center holes as in the letters q,r,o,p,a,d,g,b, may fill in and will need to have the compound path recreated manually and individually by selecting both the path for the outline and the center hole then selecting edit -> compound path -> create.

After you have gotten rid of all the clipping masks or compound paths, you may still need to un-group.

Thanks,

Ken Black
www.bestprintingonline.com