Import external file by reference

[Fred Ridder]

Responding to kgrace4715 at aol.com, Stuart Rogers wrote:

> You can easily import PDFs, but only by specifying one page at a time. 
> A multi-page PDF would have to be broken up into many single-page PDFs 
> (with reliably the same names from version to version) in order for your 
> Import By Reference scenario to work. There may be a quick way to do 
> that in Acrobat (or a macro in Word?), but I don't know it. In any 
> case, if the page count of the source document changes, the workflow breaks.


Not quite correct. It is true that each page of a multi-page PDF must be imported separately, but the original file does not have to be broken into single-page PDF files to do this. If you tell FrameMaker to import a PDF that has multiple pages, you are presented with a dialog that displays a miniature of the selected page of the PDF and provides you with both a number box and a slider bar for you to use to select the particular page you want to import. 

And I have to believe that one can programmatically step through the pages in an arbitray multi-page PDF via FrameScript or the FDK (although I have never looked into this in the slightest).

-Fred Ridder