How to open a multiple page PDF file as artboards in Illustrator CS6

I'm trying to open a PDF file with 7 pages and need to adjust each page in Illustrator CS6. How do I open the PDF file in one single AI files with all artboards within it?

870 4 4 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges asked Aug 12, 2014 at 1:42 271 1 1 gold badge 3 3 silver badges 3 3 bronze badges

5 Answers 5

It's worked beautifully for me

1,623 11 11 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges answered Oct 30, 2014 at 7:35 Talya Shachar-Albocher Talya Shachar-Albocher 211 2 2 silver badges 2 2 bronze badges Please explain more. Suppose the linked page is down. Then your answer is useless as it stands now . Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 12:34

Illustrator can not really open all pdf pages, the script mimics this functionality by opening one page at a time and duplicating the contents into a new document. it works on CS4-CC, win & mac

Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 7:56 The link broke, who would have guessed? New URL: aiscripts.com/open-multipage-pdf Commented Mar 27, 2015 at 2:06 This does work with CC15, fortunately for my sanity. Thank you, @CarlosCanto, for your plugin! Commented Aug 1, 2015 at 17:51 Thank you! Working without a problem on my Illustrator CS6. Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 13:23

The Illustrator PDF Editing Method: Illustrator's open file dialog box allows you to open a specific page of the PDF document. When changes are made to a single page and saved, those changes are saved to the original PDF document overwriting only that page of the multi page PDF file. Aside from a global view of the document as art boards, this works for most cases.

Other Methods: Illustrator doesn't have a way to open a multi page PDF as an .ai file with multiple artboards. One way is with scripts and achieve a conversion or open PDF pages one by one and drag and drop them into a new .ai file presetted with the number of desired artboards.

answered Aug 12, 2014 at 2:09 Brian Dillingham Brian Dillingham 870 4 4 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges

I forked and translated the original Multi-Page PDF Loader 4 AI v2.5 script to English, and added the ability to import .AI files.

I tested this and can successfully import multi-page documents as artboards.