Creating and Using PDF Layers in Acrobat Pro DC

hi Ted Padova here in this video I want to talk about using layers in PDF documents as you take a look at what I have on screen here you can see a file and if I move over to the left panel the last icon in this list is my layers option so if I click on layers you can see that well these are expanded and I expanded by clicking on this down pointing Arrow here to expand the view you can see that I have several different layers if I click on one I can see that it shows text if I click it off it hides the text I click on fixtures it shows fixtures and off walls turns off and on tiles the same thing and then the background okay so I have several different layers in this document now before we continue to look at layers in a PDF file let's talk first of all about how we create a file that has PDF layers I have a blank document over here and you'll notice that when I open up my panel and I click on layers there are no layers currently in this file now one option is I can open the menu and choose import as layer and if I click on my browse button I can go to my hard drive and let's say that I want to bring in this equipmentinventory.pdf file I'll select it and I need to provide a name for this layer so this was inventory [Music] so I'll type in inventory and okay and now this comes in as a layer if I want to add a new layer I can choose import as layer once again I'll hit browse and we'll go down and find another file this one is a summary file so I'll click and select that click on the select button here to import the layer once again I need to provide a name and this is summary and I'll click OK and now I have two layers you can see that both of them are visible so if I turn one off I see this current layer I'll turn that off and the inventory layer on and you can see that I have different layers that are visible by clicking on the eye icon over in the left panel now if you have form fields and you change layer views obviously you would want to use either scripts or buttons to show and hide Fields so that one layers Fields superimposed upon another layer wouldn't be interfering with it so keep that in mind now let's go back to the original document that I showed you up here I'll close this without saving it you'll notice that I have buttons over on the far left here I'm going to collapse my panel here so you get that out of the way and if I click on text you can see that my text appears click on fixtures and I have fixtures that are shown now I've got walls and tiles tile and carpet that are currently visible if I click on text it's off click on it again it's on and the same thing for each one of these layers the way that I do that is with a JavaScript and I'm going to show you that JavaScript it's quite easy and you can copy and paste this into your own documents I'll click go to prepare form here so I can access my fields and I'll double click on this first button and you see that I have a JavaScript I'm going to click and select that and click on edit and this is the JavaScript that will show and hide that layer layers in acrobat are called ocgs optional content groups so this is basically a JavaScript that says I want to get the layers here I want to Loop through and find each layer and if I find one that says text I'm going to change the state if the current state is visible I'm going to make it invisible if the current state is invisible I'm going to make it visible all you have to do is copy this JavaScript paste it into your document and then whatever you name a layer you just put that name here and replace text with your name it's quite easy to do and you can deal with showing and hiding layers in an acrobat PDF file now the absolute best tool you can use to create layers is Adobe InDesign I have an InDesign file showing how I created this document you can see here that in InDesign let's see how close pages here and I take a look at my layers panel in InDesign you can see that I have different layers that I created in InDesign and when I export this file to a PDF I'll go to file to export foreign X just temporarily click on Save and you'll notice that in this export to Adobe PDF document you see that I have layers here grayed out what you need to do is be absolutely certain that you choose a compatibility that is acrobat 6 or greater so if I change my acrobat compatibility format to Adobe Acrobat 6. then I have this create acrobat layers button here that can be made active so if I select it and I export I'm going to export this PDF document with Adobe Acrobat PDF layers that's how you create a layered file in acrobat and I showed you the buttons that can show and hide layers you can use layers to expand all of your form designs and create some very interesting Interactive documents I added a link to this file in the description that you can click on and download this PDF document tear it apart take a look at the javascripts copy and paste the javascripts to add to your own form design so feel free to use it as you wish so once again this is Ted pedova wishing you all the best in all your forms creation activities

Channel: Ted Padova

Views: 7,594

Keywords: PDF Layers, Acrobat OCGs, Show/Hide Layers in PDFs, Create PDF Layers, OCG JavaScripts

Id: jj0GmuTvzPM

Length: 7min 3sec (423 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2022