User Guide

FlexiPDF 2017 - All Editions

SoftMaker Software GmbH and Iceni Technology Ltd.

Contents
Quick Start Guide 8
Basic text editing 9
Form filling 12
Traditional Paper Forms (Non-interactive forms) 12
OCR corrections 14
Activating your software 16
On-line Activation 16
Potential Problems 17
Off-line activation 17
Toolbars 19
Edit toolbar 20
FlexiPDF Professional only 20
Drawing toolbar 21
Commenting toolbar 22
Status bar 23
Converting PDF to other formats 24
Exporting a range of pages 24
Exporting by article thread 24
Converting other documents to PDF 25
Re-installing the FlexiPDF Printer 26
Joining multiple PDFs 27
Adding files 27
Re-ordering documents 27
Joining 27
PDF photo albums 28
Work Mode 29

Editing Graphics & Images 30

Selecting objects 31
Stretching objects 32
Scaling objects 33
Rotating objects 34
Changing rotation origin 35
Changing colour & line width (RGB) 36
Changing colour & line width (CMYK) 37
Swatches catalogue 38
 Copying colours between objects 39
Aligning objects 40
Replacing images 41
Inserting new images 43
Object borders 44
Locking objects 45
To Lock: 45
Unlocking Individual Objects: 45
Unlocking All Objects 45
Hiding objects 46
Hiding: 46
Showing: 46
Grouping objects 47
Grouping: 47
Ungrouping: 47
Layout grid 48
Grid spacing 48
Layout guides 49
Horizontal guides 49
Vertical guides 49
Line arrows 50
Layers 51
Moving objects between layers 52
Re-sampling Images 53
Remove all hidden image data 53
Redacting Images 54

Editing Text 55
On-screen display 56
Creating new text boxes 57
Using the Text Plus tool 57
Using the Text tool 57
Editing text across columns & pages 58
Overset text 59
Inserting special characters 60
Performing a spell check 61
The Spelling dialogue box 61
Redacting text 63
Recognising Text (Optical Character Recognition) 64
Formatting Text 65
Underline 66
Example underline effects 67
Strike-through 68
Example strike-through styles 68
Margins & indents 69
First-line indent 69
Left margin & hanging indents 70
Ruler units 70
Bold, overprint & italic text 71
Actual Bold 71
Simulated Bold 71
Italic 72
Background colour 73
Line Spacing 74
At Least 74
Exactly 74
Multiple 75
Paragraph spacing 76
Letter spacing 77
Letter space & word space 77
Using letter spacing 78
Using word spacing 78
Tabstops 79
Creating/deleting tabs 79
On-screen display 79
Creating centre & right tabs 80
Tab leaders 80
Trailing tab leaders 81
Text Colours 82

Advanced Editing 83
Vertical text alignment 84
Automatic text fitting 85
Flowing text around graphics 88
Rebuilding text boxes 90
Merging text boxes 91
Merging using the Object Tool 92
Splitting text boxes 93
 Splitting using the Object Tool 94
Remapping fonts 95
Editing font mappings 96
Numbering pages 97
Cloning objects across pages 98
Deleting objects across pages 102
Converting text into vector outlines 103
Clipping mask creation 104
Clipping mask removal 106
Editing Tabular Data 107

Find & Replace 108

Find & replace text 109
Find & replace fonts 110
Find & replace text (advanced) 112
Find & replace text styles 113
Find & replace in bookmarks 117
Find & replace in comments 118
Find & replace in hyperlinks 119
Text reflow modes 120
Reset Letter Spacing 120
Reflow: New Text Only 121
Reflow: New Text Only 122
Reflow: Containing Line Only 123
Potential Problems 123
Find & replace in long documents 124
Find & replace in files 125
Setup Folders 126
Find & redact 128

Page Operations 129

Thumbnail View 130
Cropping Pages 131
Auto-Crop 131
Inserting new pages 132
Reordering pages 133
Using the Re-order Page dialogue 133
Resizing pages 134
Inserting pages from other documents 135
Placing a page from another document 137
 Method 1: 137
Method 2: Drag & drop 137
Inserting pages from a scanner 138
Comparing PDF styles when using OCR 139
Page margins 140
Watermarking pages 141
Page labels 143
Editing page labels 143
Creating new page labels 144

Document Operations 145

Document properties 146
Security settings 147
View current settings 147
Document security 148
Tracking changes 149
Document font catalogue 151
Flight check 152
Portfolio Creation 153
Adding items to a portfolio 154
Deleting items from a portfolio 154
Extracting items from a portfolio 154

Commenting 155
Comments catalogue 156
Sticky notes 157
Anatomy of a sticky note 157
Creating sticky notes 158
Deleting sticky notes 158
Sticky note properties 159
Sticky Note Icons 159
Graphical comments and notes 160
Stamps 161
Adding a stamp to a page 161
Stamp properties 162
User-defined stamps 163
Adding a signature to a page 164
Defining a signature from a file 164
Text highlighting 166
Hyperlinks 167
 Type: Go To View 168
Type: Open File 168
Type: World Wide Web Link 169
Image Box & Table Box annotations 169
Bookmarks 170
On screen display 170
Automatic bookmarks 171
Bookmark font filters 173
Creating bookmarks 175
Renaming bookmarks 176
Deleting bookmarks 176
Moving bookmarks 177
Moving to the top 177
Nesting bookmarks 178
De-nesting Bookmarks 178
Article threads 179
Adding article threads 179
Extending existing articles 181
Duplicating article boxes 182
Deleting articles 183

Exporting Content 184

Exporting pages 185
Exporting images & illustrations 186
Exporting photographs 186
Exporting graphics 186
How do you tell graphics from photographs? 186
Marking up an image 187
Exporting individual images 189
Exporting tabular information 191
Marking up a table 191
Exporting individual tables 192
Cropping for export 193
Exporting article threads 194
General export settings 195
Text Output 195
Text Format Pop-up 195
Right-to-left reading order 197
Image Output 197
Image Format 197
 Convert each page into an image 197
Place images in sub-folders 197
Text export settings 198
Identify image captions 198
Try to preserve layout 198
Render text in vector artwork 198
Recognize Speech Marks 199
Preserve line breaks 199
De-hyphenate Words 199
Create file for every page / article 199
Hyperlinks 200
Bookmarks 200
Page Breaks 200
HTML export settings 201
Background 201
Header and footer files 201
Page-to-page links 201
Image Borders 202
Frames 202
Image export settings 203
Auto-identify vector artwork 203
Use original OPI name if available 203
Image Scaling 204
Fix image resolution at: 204
Advanced Scaling Pop-up 204
Colour depth to use when rendering 204
Exporting to LIMS 206
Creating a LIMS template with FlexiPDF 206
Using the PDF template with Argus 207

Translation 209
Exporting content for translation 210
Marking text blocks for translation 213
Marking whole text boxes for export 213
Partially marking text boxes 214
Importing translated text 216
Font problems during import 218
Managing font substitutions 219
Translation Tips 221
Templates 223
Basic templates 224
User restrictions 225
Embedded font & colour resources 227
Checking resource pages 227
Dynamic text using tokens 228
Dynamic text using fields 229
Fields and tabstops 231
Dynamic images 232
Naming multiple images 233
Dynamic line-art & graphics 235
Creating optional artwork 235
Dynamic page size 236
Controlling dynamic page growth 238

Preferences 239
Editing preferences 240
Unit of measurement 240
Default Editing Tool 240
Show changed text in: 240
Insert smart quotes 240
Paste text with formatting 240
User-defined stamps folder 240
Editing preferences: Advanced Settings 241
Detect bold / overprint text 241
Detect tabs and Leader dots 241
Detect underlined / strike-through text 241
Include cropped text when editing 241
Loading preferences 243
Default zoom 243
Override initial zoom 243
Initial View/Zoom/Page 243
Saving preferences 244
User name 244
Make a backup when saving files 244
Autosave every: 244
Store layout info in PDF 244
Spelling preferences 245
Language 245
 Ignore words in UPPERCASE 245
Ignore words with numbers 245
Hyphenate words 245
User Interface language 245

Appendix 247
Editing non-English text 248
Double byte support 248
Display of double-byte Characters 248
Fonts in PDF 249
Font considerations 249
Custom spelling dictionaries 250
Locating the custom dictionary 250
Quick Start Guide
Unlock the software
Basic text editing
Converting other documents to PDF
Converting PDF to other formats
Form filling
Joining multiple PDFs
OCR corrections
Off-line activation
On-line Activation
PDF photo albums
Toolbars
Work Mode

8
 Quick Start Guide 9

Basic text editing Standard Pro

FlexiPDF enables you to edit text in a PDF document as if you were using a regular
word processor.

Open the PDF to be edited.

In this example there is an r missing
from you.

From the toolbar select the

Text tool.

Click the mouse on the text to

2 be edited. After a short pause, while
FlexiPDF prepares the page for editing,
you can start editing.

Edit the text - in this example the letter r

has been added to your.
The text box automatically grows longer
in order to accommodate all the words. In
this case, we do not want this, so we will
3 re-shape the box in the next step.

Continued...

Notes
The new r is displayed in red because Show changes is enabled in the Preferences
dialogue. This change highlighting is only visible in FlexiPDF and not in any other
PDF viewer.
A text box will automatically grow or shrink until you re-shape the box yourself. After
which it remains whatever shape you made it and will become overset if you try to
enter too much text.
 Quick Start Guide 10

Continued from previous page

First drag the bottom re-size handle

upwards to make the text box shorter
and stop it from colliding with the line
beneath.

Now the box is too small to show all the

text, you will see a red box in the bottom
right hand corner indicating the box has
become overset.
To reveal the missing text, resize the text
4 box again - making it wider.
Drag the left & right resize handles
outwards to make the box slightly wider.

The text now fits on two lines as before.

Save the changes you have made to your
PDF.

5 Continued...
 Quick Start Guide 11

Continued from previous page

If you have the free version of FlexiPDF

you will see this dialogue box.
You have the option to save your PDF with
a watermark added to edited pages. The
watermarks can be safely removed at a
later date.
The second option activates your copy
of FlexiPDF using the activation key
supplied when you purchase the product.
6 After activation watermarks are no longer
Standard Pro added to PDFs.
 Quick Start Guide 12

Form filling Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can be used to fill-in both interactive and non-interactive forms.

An interactive form is a specially prepared PDF which contains interactive elements
like text boxes, buttons and lists. You can interact with these, supplying text and
making selections. You can then save, print or send this filled-in PDF to others via
email.

Traditional Paper Forms (Non-interactive forms)

A non-interactive form is simply a PDF version of a traditional paper form. Normally
this would have to be printed out then filled-in by hand. With FlexiPDF, you can use
the T+ tool to fill-in text fields and check boxes, speeding up the entire process while
keeping the form entirely digital and available to email to a third party.
When started in Form Filler mode, FlexiPDF offers simplified menus and toolbars for
the purpose of filling-in forms. In this mode FlexiPDF does not add watermarks to
edited documents.

Select the Text Plus tool.

As you move the mouse over the
form, FlexiPDF will try to highlight the
areas to be filled-in.

2
Click on a highlighted area to begin typing
into it.
Hold the Control key when you click to
ignore FlexiPDFs guess and create a
small, single-line text box.

Continued...
 Quick Start Guide 13

Continued from previous page

If FlexiPDF determines that the item

under the mouse looks like a check-box, it
changes the cursor to a pointing hand.
Click to mark the box with an X.
Click again to remove the X.
Hold the Control key and click to ignore
the check-box and create a small, single-
line text box.
Hold Control+Shift to force FlexiPDF to
create an X even when it doesnt recognise
the area as being a checkbox.

Notes
Use the Text Plus tool to create new text boxes in any kind of PDF not just form-style
documents.
The Text Plus tool does not edit existing text - only text created by the tool either
during this session or from when the PDF was last edited.
Since FlexiPDF is making a guess at the shape and location of editable areas, it may
sometimes arrive at an incorrect decision. In this case, hold down Ctrl as you click to
ignore the guess.
Filled-in forms are normal PDFs that can be viewed and printed by any PDF viewing
application.
 14

OCR corrections Standard Pro

Some scanner applications place scans as images in PDF files, but invisibly add
their textual content behind the images. This results in the scanned pages keeping
their original layout, but making them at the same time searchable. You can create
such a hybrid file with FlexiPDF, too, by choosing a searchable PDF when
performing OCR.
In order to correct errors in this hidden text, you can make the text visible in
FlexiPDF.
Open the PDF to be corrected then choose
Document > OCR Corrections > Start.

The example shows a scanned page in

which the text added by the OCR process
is hidden.

Since OCR mode could cause a PDF to be

substantially changed, you will be asked to
confirm your choice.
Always make sure you have a backup of
the PDF before you start this mode.
Choose the Start OCR mode option to
begin.
2

The hidden text becomes visible, the

scanned image faded and locked to make
editing easier.
You can now edit the text whilst making
reference to the original content in the
image.

3
Continued...
 Quick Start Guide 15

Continued from previous page

This example shows some corrections

(shown in red because Show Changed
Text has been enabled in the Preferences
dialogue box).
After all corrections have been done,
choose: Document > OCR Corrections >
Finish.

The OCR text, including any edits you

made will become invisible and the
4 scanned image restored to its normal
density.
If you find some unwanted text remains
visible in your document, choose
Document > OCR Corrections > Hide all text
which will make all text invisible even if
it wasnt originally invisible. Since this
operation cannot be undone, please ensure
you save a copy of your document first.

Notes
If your document happened to contain any non-ocr text added after the scanning
process, this too will be hidden at the end of the correction process.
Choose View > Text > Boundaries to see the boundaries between different blocks of
text.
Changing the colour of the OCR text can make it easier to distinguish from the
background image. This will not affect the finished PDF.
Some OCR packages create many small text blocks that are difficult to edit. Use the
Rebuilding text boxes on page 90 in FlexiPDF Professional to merge disjoint
blocks of text into a single, editable text block.
 Quick Start Guide 16

Activating your software

FlexiPDF Professional and Standard editions add watermarks to saved PDFs unless
you activate the software using the code supplied when purchased.
Activations codes are usually provided as part of a purchase receipt email. If you
cannot find your code, please contact [email protected]

Choose Help > Buy/Activate from the

main menu bar to display the Buy/Activate
FlexiPDF dialogue box.

If you have your activation key code to

hand, press Activate.
If you have not yet purchased FlexiPDF,
press Purchase.
This will attempt to open the FlexiPDF
web page using your web browser.
Once you have bought a license and
have an activation key, press the Activate
button.

On-line Activation

Your code may be a number or sequence

of numbers and letters or your email
address.

On-line activation is the quickest method.

If your computer does not have an internet
connection, uncheck this box.

Continued...
 Quick Start Guide 17

Continued from previous page

Potential Problems
If you computer is behind a fire wall or web access is blocked in some way,
the activation may not succeed. If this is the case, follow the off-line activation
instructions below.

Off-line activation
Uncheck the Activate on-line check box to reveal the lower part of the dialogue box.

This is the code you should send to

SoftMaker (your code will be different
to that pictured). The code changes every
time you install FlexiPDF.
Press the Copy button to copy the code to
the clipboard (to avoid copying it by hand)

Continued...
 Quick Start Guide 18

Continued from previous page

SoftMaker will use the code you send

to generate an off-line activation key-
normally within 24 hours (except at
weekends)
When you receive your off-line key enter
it here.
The key will only work on the computer
you used to generate the code.
It will not work if you have re-installed
FlexiPDF on that computer since you
requested the off-line activation.
 Quick Start Guide 19

Toolbars
The first three toolbars and the status bar are shown by default, the others are hidden.
All of the toolbars shown below can be shown or hidden by using the View > Toolbars
menu.

Edit toolbar - see page 20

Navigation toolbar

Text formatting toolbar

Drawing toolbar - see page 21

Commenting toolbar - see page 22

Alignment toolbar

Translation toolbar - see Exporting content for translation on page 210

Work Mode bar - see Status bar on page 23

Status bar - see Status bar on page 23

 Quick Start Guide 20

Edit toolbar

Hand tool - grab the document and pan around to view hidden areas.

Zoom tool - click to zoom in. Control-click to zoom out. Drag out a box to
zoom into a region.

Object tool - click to select objects, move and resize by dragging the re-
size handles. Drag our a box to select a group of objects. See page 31.

Rotate tool - only active when objects have been selected with the Object
tool. Click to change rotation origin. Drag to rotate the selection. See page
34.

Text tool - click to edit existing text.

Text plus tool - click to add a new text box or edit an existing box added
with the tool. Drag to create a new, larger text box.

Linked text tool - click on blocks of text to link them together in order.
Click again to unlink. Text will flow between linked blocks.

Crop tool - click and drag to create a crop box. Resize the crop box then
press Return to perform the crop.

Hyperlink tool - drag out a box to create a new hyperlink, table or image
annotation.

Article tool - drag out a new article box around text. Link article boxes
together for easier reading and export.

Fill colour - change the fill colour of selected objects. See page 36.
(FlexiPDF Standard only.)

Line colour tool - change the outline colour of selected objects. Also
change the line thickness. (FlexiPDF Standard only.)

FlexiPDF Professional only

Pipette tool - click on an object to copy its fill & stroke colours to the
currently selected object(s). See page 39

Colour picker - click to change the fill or stroke colours of the selection. Also
changes the line-width used for stroking. See page 37
 Quick Start Guide 21

Drawing toolbar
Choose View > Toolbars > Drawing to show/hide the toolbar.

Pencil (Freehand) - create freehand line drawings.

Rectangle - hold down SHIFT while dragging to create squares.

Single lines - single straight lines. Can have arrows applied to their ends.

Ovals - hold down SHIFT while dragging to create circles.

Pen - connected straight lines.

Start arrows - apply various types of arrowhead to the

start of a line or group of connected lines.

End arrows - the size of the applied decoration is related

to the line width.

Toggle border - place a simple border around the selected object(s).

Useful for placing a border around images.

Notes
Some of these tools look very similar to those on the commenting toolbar. However,
these add graphic elements to the page. Commenting tools add similar shaped objects
to a special layer floating above the page and associate a note window with those
objects. The appearance of the comments made with commenting tools is left to the
discretion of the application used to view the PDF. Objects made with the drawing
tools should look identical in any PDF application.
 Quick Start Guide 22

Commenting toolbar
Choose View > Toolbars > Commenting to show/hide the toolbar.
Similar to the drawing tools, these tools allow you to add a comment to each
annotation. Unlike the drawing tools, the annotations do not form part of the PDF
page but are placed in a separate layer that floats over the page.
The annotations you create also appear summarised in the Comments catalogue.
(View > Comments).

Sticky note - Drag out a box to the size of the required sticky note.

Rectangle note - drag out a rectangle. Hold SHIFT while dragging for
squares. Double click to edit the attached note.

Circle note - drag to create an oval. Hold SHIFT while dragging to create
a circle.

Polygon note - create connected straight line shapes.

Scribble (Freehand) note - create freehand line drawings.

Line note - create a single line

Text highlight - toggles a highlight on the selected text. Select text with
the Text tool, then press this button to highlight it.

Stamp tool - add a predefined stamp to a page such as Confidential,

Draft, Sign here. Also add your signature to a page.

Right-click the mouse over an annotation

and choose Properties to access the
Properties dialogue from where you
can change the colour and style of the
annotation.
 Quick Start Guide 23

Status bar
The status bar (View > Status Bar) provides at-a-glance information and short cuts to
commonly used functions and dialogue boxes.

Page label - only present if the

PDF uses page labels.

Double-click to edit documents

page labels. (Pro only)

Lock icon - visible only when

the current document has
security restrictions.

Double-click to open the

Document Security dialogue Dimensions of the
(Standard and Pro only) current page

The dimensions of the currently Rendering mode - shows either Preview

selected object(s). or Outlines depending upon the current
rendering mode.
Only visible when using the
Object Select tool. Outline is quicker to draw and makes
editing quicker. It has no permanent
This information and more is effect on the PDF, only while viewed in
also available in the Transform FlexiPDF.
palette. Object > Transform.
Double click to toggle between modes
(Standard and Professional only).
 Quick Start Guide 24

Converting PDF to other formats Standard Pro

To convert a PDF into HTML, text or RTF or to export the images within a PDF, use
the File > Export menu.
FlexiPDF can export a document on a page-by-page basis or an article-by-article
bases (FlexiPDF Professional only).

Exporting a range of pages

Choose File > Export > Pages as.
Choose the range you wish to export.
Near the bottom of the dialogue box is a
summary of the output format that will be
used for the export. To change the output
format, press Format.
The output options available are detailed
in General export settings on page 195.

Exporting by article thread

Choose File > Export > Articles as.
If your document contains no article
threads you will need to create some. See
Adding article threads on page 179.
Choose to export just the articles
beginning on the current page, or all
articles in the document. If no articles
Pro
begin on the current page, only one option
will be available.
Near the bottom of the dialogue box is a
summary of the output format that will be
used for the export. To change the output
format, press Format.
The output options available are detailed
in General export settings on page 195.
 Quick Start Guide 25

Converting other documents to PDF

To convert any document to PDF, print it using the FlexiPDF Printer.

Open the document in the application you

normally use to view it.
In this example, were viewing a web page
in Internet Explorer.

Print the document and choose FlexiPDF as

the printer to use.
If you do not see FlexiPDF listed as an
available printer it may be that you did
not choose to install it when you installed
FlexiPFD - it is an optional feature.
See Re-installing the FlexiPDF Printer
on page 26
To change the paper-size used for the final
PDF, press Preferences then Advanced.
2

After printing has finished, FlexiPDF will

open showing the new PDF created.
The new PDF may be edited and saved as
normal.

3
 Quick Start Guide 26

Re-installing the FlexiPDF Printer

Make sure FlexiPDF is not running then
run the FlexiPDF installer again.
If you need to download a copy, it will
be available on the download page of
SoftMakers website:
http://www.softmaker.com/en/download
Make sure you choose to install the
FlexiPDF Printer by ticking the checkbox
on the 5th screen of the installer.
 Quick Start Guide 27

Joining multiple PDFs Pro

FlexiPDF can quickly join multiple PDF documents into a single document.
Drag & drop any number of PDF files onto an open but empty FlexiPDF window
or choose File > Join.

Adding files
Add further files or entire
folders full of files using
the Add Files and Add Folder
buttons. When adding folders,
any PDF found in the folder or
its sub-folders will be added
to the list. There is no limit on
the number of files that can be
added.

Re-ordering documents
The order of the files in the list is the order in which they will be joined together. To
change the order, select a file then press Up or Down to move it higher or lower in the
list.

Joining
Press Join to begin the process
of merging the documents
together. FlexiPDF will prompt
for a filename for the new
merged document.
Once the process is complete,
FlexiPDF will ask if you wish
to open the new file.

Notes
To add page numbers to a document after merging see Cloning objects across pages
on page 98.
FlexiPDF will reject encrypted PDFs. Remove any passwords and encryption from all
files before trying to join. See Security settings on page 147
 Quick Start Guide 28

PDF photo albums Standard Pro

Drag & drop any number of images onto FlexiPDF and the software will create a new
PDF in which each page shows one of the images dropped.

Ensure no documents are open in

FlexiPDF.

Drag & drop a selection of JPEG,

TIFF, PNG or BMP images onto
FlexiPDF.
2

FlexiPDF will construct a new PDF in

which each page contains one of the
dropped images.

3
 Quick Start Guide 29

Work Mode Standard Pro

Sometimes you may want to view PDFs without fear of making accidental edits.
To help avoid this, FlexiPDF can operate in three different modes which limit the
changes you are able to make to a PDF:
View mode
All editing, document assembly and commenting is disabled. Only
functions associated with viewing such as find, layers and bookmarks are
available. A PDF cannot be altered at all in this mode.
Comment mode
Add or edit comments (sticky notes, highlights etc.) but nothing more.
Edit mode (default)
Normal editing mode in which all tools available for the particular flavour
of FlexiPDF (Standard or Professional) are available.

Notes
FlexiPDF remembers the mode that was in effect the last time the software was used.
If not visible, show the work mode toolbar by choosing View > Toolbars > Work
Mode.
Editing Graphics & Images
Aligning objects
Changing colour & line width (CMYK)
Changing colour & line width (RGB)
Copying colours between objects
Grouping objects
Hiding objects
Inserting new images
Layers
Layout grid
Layout guides
Line arrows
Locking objects
Object borders
Redacting Images
Replacing images
Re-sampling Images
Rotating objects
Scaling objects
Selecting objects
Stretching objects
Swatches catalogue

30
 Editing Graphics & Images 31

Selecting objects Standard Pro

Select the Object tool from the tool

bar.
Click on a single object to select it.
If objects overlap, the top-most object is
selected.
Ctrl+Shiftto select the next object
underneath the current object. Each time
you Ctrl+Shift, the next object down is
selected.

Some pages are littered with invisible objects making selections difficult. These
objects can usually be safely removed without altering the appearance of the page.
To see invisible objects, choose View > Outlines or double-click on the Preview in the
status bar at the bottom of the main FlexiPDF window.

Drag out a box to select all objects

touching the box. Objects do not need
to be completely inside the box, any that
touch will be selected.
Hold Shift to remove objects from the
current selection.
Cut/Copy/Paste may be used on single
objects or groups of objects.

Notes
Press Backspace or Delete on your keyboard to delete selected objects.
Click and drag to move the object or selection of objects to a new position.
Use the cursor keys to move selected objects by 1 point (1/72 inch). Hold the Shift key as
well to move by 10 points.
Copy/Paste of graphics between FlexiPDF and other applications is not supported.
 Editing Graphics & Images 32

Stretching objects Standard Pro

Selected objects can be stretched by dragging the handles on the sides or corners of
the selection box. Alternatively, choose Object > Scale (FlexiPDF Professional).

Select the object(s) to be stretched

using the Object tool.
Drag one of the four side-handles or four
corner-handles to stretch.
To retain the aspect-ratio of the original
1 shape(s), hold down the Shift key while
dragging. Doing so in this example would
result in a larger circle, not a large oval.

The selected objects will be stretched to fit

the box you dragged out.
Notice the text has not been stretched.
Stretching text like this changes the shape
of the text box causing any text inside to
reflow into the new shape. It will not alter
2 the size of the characters themselves. If
you need to do that, use Object > Scale.

Notes
Line widths are not affected when stretching in this way. To scale these too, use
Object > Scale dialogue box (FlexiPDF Professional only)
Objects and selections may also be scaled using Object > Transform (FlexiPDF
Professional only)
 Editing Graphics & Images 33

Scaling objects Pro

Select the objects to be scaled using

the Object tool. Then choose Object
> Scale from the main menu.

Using the Scale dialogue box you can

scale the selection by a single value or
different values of the X and Y scales.
You can also specify whether the line-
width of objects being scaled is affected in
the same way.
Press the Copy button to scale a new copy
of the selection, leaving the existing
2 objects untouched.

3
The image on the left shows the effect of a 200% scale which also scaled the line width.
The image on the right was scaled without affecting line widths.

Notes
Objects and selection may also be scaled using Object > Transform (FlexiPDF
Professional only)
Scaling in this way affects both graphics and text.
 Editing Graphics & Images 34

Rotating objects Standard Pro

Selected objects can be freely rotated by any angle. Alternatively, choose

Object > Rotate (FlexiPDF Professional only)

Select the object(s) to be rotated

using the Object tool.

Now choose the Rotate tool.

Drag the selections outline to the desired

orientation.
Hold down the Shift key while dragging to
constrain rotation to 45 angles (0, 45, 90,
135 etc.)

Stop dragging to complete the rotation.

After rotation, the Object tool will
become active again.

Notes
Objects and selection may also be rotated (or sheared) using Object > Transform
(FlexiPDF Professional only) Continued...
 Editing Graphics & Images 35

Continued from previous page

Changing rotation origin

Objects can be rotated around an arbitrary point.

Select the object(s) to be rotated

then select the Rotate tool.
Click the left mouse button to
reposition the origin.

Rectangles origin has been moved to the

centre of the circle
1

Drag the selections outline to the desired

orientation.
Hold down the Shift key while dragging to
constrain rotation to 45 angles (0, 45, 90,
135 etc.)

Stop dragging to complete the

rotation.
After rotation, the Object tool will become
active again.

3
 Editing Graphics & Images 36

Changing colour & line width (RGB) Standard

All objects (except clipping paths and images) can have a line or stroke colour and a
fill colour.
You can choose new colours for either or make the line or fill invisible.

Circle has red line colour, yellow fill colour

Text has black fill colour and no line colour (this

is common for text)

Text has no fill colour and red line colour

1

To change the colour of the selection press

the Fill Colour or Line Colour buttons.
These buttons also display the currently
selected colour.
2

The line and fill colour dialogue boxes

3 offer a simple way of selecting colours
from the RGB (red-green-blue) colour
space.

Click to make the line colour invisible. A

similar check box exists on the fill-colour
dialogue box for removing the fill colour.

Control the thickness of the outline by

specifying a value in points (1/72 inch)
A thickness of 0.0 will be rendered as a
hairline.
 Editing Graphics & Images 37

Changing colour & line width (CMYK) Pro

FlexiPDF Professional lets you change the fill and stroke colours of selected objects.
Various different selection methods are offered including a CMYK colour picker.

Press the Colour button to open the colour

picker dialogue box.
The fill and stroke colours are both
included on the same toolbar button.
1

Press Swatches to see a catalogue of all the

colours currently in use in the PDF.
No fill or No stroke colour are
depicted as white with a red diagonal line.

Line colour

Swap fill/line colours

2
Fill colour - click to
change

Short cuts for transparent,

white & black

Notes
The simple colour picker used by FlexiPDF Standard and FlexiPDF Form Filler always
chooses colours from the RGB palette. If the selected objects use a different colour
space (such as CMYK), FlexiPDF converts the RGB value into CMYK. This can cause
a slight difference in appearance of the colour which is unavoidable when converting
between light and ink-based colour spaces.
All versions of FlexiPDF retain the original colour space of an object.
 Editing Graphics & Images 38

Swatches catalogue Pro

The Swatches window shows all the colours used in a PDF. It can also be used to
change the colour of selected objects.

Choose View > Swatches to open the

swatches catalogue.
Alternatively, press the Swatches button
from within the CMYK colour picker
dialogue box.
There may be a short delay while the
catalogue is built.
The catalogue shows the component
values of each colour and (if available),
the names of separation colours.
Double-click on a colour to change any
selected objects.
2 CMYK, Gray and Separation colour
values are shown as a percentages from
0 to 100.
RGB values range from 0 to 255

Choose between fill or line

colour by clicking on the
shape.

Click on the black arrows to

swap fill & line colours.

Notes
You can restrict the colour available during editing to just those in the PDF or in a
special hidden resource page. See User Restrictions for more information.
The swatches catalogue is populated only when a PDF is opened.
 Editing Graphics & Images 39

Copying colours between objects Pro

Use the Pipette tool to copy the colour from one object to another.

Using the Object tool, select the

object(s) whose colour you wish to
change.

Next choose the Pipette tool from

the toolbar.

Click the Pipette on an object whose

colour you want to copy.

The fill colour, line colour and line width

of the chosen object is copied to the
selected objects.

3
 Editing Graphics & Images 40

Aligning objects Standard Pro

Objects may be aligned relative to other. You can also align objects relative to fixed
guides. See Guides for more details.

Choose the Object tool from the

toolbar.
Select the objects to be aligned.

Choose Object > Align > Top to align the

tops of the objects together.
All objects in the selection are aligned to
the top-most object.

All the alignment styles are available from

the Object Alignment toolbar.
To show this toolbar choose View >
Toolbars > Object Alignment.

Notes
The order in which you select items for alignment is not important.
Aligning text blocks does not affect the paragraph alignment (justification) within the
text blocks.
 Editing Graphics & Images 41

Replacing images Standard Pro

You can substitute an existing image for another loaded from disc. Supported image
formats are JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP and PDF.

Choose the Object tool from the

toolbar.
Select the image to be replaced, then
choose Object > Images > Replace Existing.
You can also click the right mouse button
to see a similar menu.

In this example a picture of a Volkswagen

Beetle has replaced the old image.
The new image is placed inside the
clipping mask (pink outline) used by the
old image.
The new image is automatically selected
after being inserted.

Scale the new image by dragging one of

the resize handles outwards.
Hold the Shift key at the same time to
ensure the aspect ratio is maintained.

Continued...
 Editing Graphics & Images 42

Continued from previous page

The new image needs to be moved to the

centre of the clip mask.
Drag it to its new position using the mouse
or nudge it using the cursor keys (and Shift
for larger steps).

The finished result after scaling and

repositioning the new image.

Notes
FlexiPDF supports images up to a maximum of 8-bits per colour channel
 Editing Graphics & Images 43

Inserting new images Standard Pro

Images can be quickly added to a page using drag & drop.

Drag & drop multiple image files onto an

open document in FlexiPDF to insert them
into the current page.
Or, choose Object > Images > Insert
then choose a single image from the file
selector.
Choose from JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP
image formats.

Drag & drop multiple

images onto an open
document

New images are pasted into the page on

top of each other. Use the object tool to
move and stretch them to the correct size.

Notes
FlexiPDF supports images up to a maximum of 8-bits per colour channel
 Editing Graphics & Images 44

Object borders Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can add simple borders around objects. This is most effective when used
around an image.

Select the objects which are to have

a border placed around them.
Choose Object > Border > 2 pt.
or press the border button on the
Drawing toolbar.
(View > Toolbars > Drawing)

The border width can be changed by

choose another point size from the:
Object > Border sub-menu.

Borders can be applied to any object, not

just images.
To remove the borders, press the border
button again, or choose Object > Border >
No Border.

Notes
Borders are always black.
 Editing Graphics & Images 45

Locking objects Pro

Objects can be locked to inhibit accidental editing.

To Lock:
1. Using the Object tool, select the object(s) to be locked.
2. Choose Object > Lock or
3. Right-click the mouse and choose Lock Selection
Objects will remain locked even after the PDF is saved and re-opened (provided
FlexiPDF Layout is preserved in the PDF. See Store layout info in PDF on page
244).

Unlocking Individual Objects:

1. Choose the Object tool and move the mouse cursor over the object.
2. Right-click the mouse and choose Unlock Object/s.
The object(s) under the mouse cursor will be unlocked and selected.

Unlocking All Objects

1. Choose Object > Unlock All.
 Editing Graphics & Images 46

Hiding objects Pro

To make editing complex artwork easier, objects can be temporarily hidden.

Hiding:
1. Using the Object tool, select the object(s) to be hidden
2. Choose Object > Hide.
Hidden objects will become visible again the next time the PDF is loaded.

Showing:
1. Choose Object > Show All.
 Editing Graphics & Images 47

Grouping objects Pro

Objects may be grouped together to make editing easier.

Grouping:
1. Using the Object tool, select the object(s) to be grouped.
2. Choose Object > Group or
3. Right-click the mouse and choose Group Selection.
Groupings remain even after the PDF has been saved and reopened (provided
FlexiPDF Layout is preserved in the PDF. See Store layout info in PDF on page
244).

Ungrouping:
Select the group(s) to be ungrouped using the Object tool.
4. Choose Object > Ungroup or
5. Right-click the mouse and choose Ungroup Selection.
 Editing Graphics & Images 48

Layout grid Pro

You can use a grid to help when aligning objects on a page. When displayed, this grid
makes your pages look like graph paper. You can also make objects snap to the lines
of the grid when you move them.
The distance between grid lines and the snapping behaviour can be controlled by
you.

Choose View > Grid & Guides > Show Grid

to display the grid.
The grid has major (darker) and minor
(lighter) grid-lines.
To make objects snap to the grid lines
when creating, moving or resizing, choose
View > Grid & Guides > Snap to Grid.

Grid spacing
Choose View > Grid & Guides > Grid
Spacing.

Spacing is the distance between the major

(darker) grid lines.
Control the number of minor (lighter)
grid-lines by specifying a value for Divided
into.

Notes
The visibility and spacing of the grid are stored in the PDF and will be used (by
FlexiPDF only) next time the PDF is opened.
If visible, grids will be included when printing a document.
To change the units used for the grid, choose File > Preferences and click on the
Editing tab.
 Editing Graphics & Images 49

Layout guides Pro

You can create multiple horizontal and vertical guides to help with layout and
positioning on a page. Objects snap to guides when moved close to them making it
simpler to align objects.

Horizontal guides
To create a horizontal guide, click in the
horizontal ruler at the top of the window
and drag down to position the resulting
guide.

Vertical guides
To create a vertical guide, click in the
vertical ruler at the left hand side of the
window and drag across to position the
resulting guide.

Vertical ruler bar

Notes
Guides are stored in the PDF (if Store layout in PDF is enabled) for use next
time the document is edited by FlexiPDF.
Once guides have been created they can be moved and deleted using the Object
tool as if they were normal objects.
To temporarily hide all guides (or stop them from printing) choose
View > Grid & Guides > Hide Guides.
 Editing Graphics & Images 50

Line arrows Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can add various kinds of arrow heads to either the start or end of lines and
polygonal shapes.

Choose View > Toolbars > Drawing to view

the drawing tools.
The start and end arrow menus display
the currently chosen arrow type for the
selected object(s).

Use the Line or Polygon tools to

draw.

Click on the start/end arrows menus to

change the arrows of the current selection.
Tear off either menu to convert it into a
floating toolbar.

Notes
Lines and their arrows always have the same colour.
The size of the arrow head is proportional to the line width.
 Editing Graphics & Images 51

Layers Standard Pro

FlexiPDF offers a simple way of editing documents which include layers. Using the
layers panel you can show and hide individual layers in a document to make editing
easier. You can also move objects between layers.

Choose View > Layers to open the layers

panel.
Drag the title bar of the layers panel to
make it into a floating window.

Click on the check box next to each layer

to show or hide it from view.
Click on the layer name to rename it. Any
name change is stored in the PDF when it
is next saved (FlexiPDF Professional only)
When you click on an object during
editing, the containing layer is highlighted
(if the layers panel is open).
Since FlexiPDF ignores objects in hidden
layers, it can make editing much more
responsive if you hide all irrelevant
objects before you begin to edit.

Notes
FlexiPDF cannot create or delete layers.
Changing the visibility of layers affects only the way it is displayed in FlexiPDF. No
permanent change is made to the PDF.
 Editing Graphics & Images 52

Moving objects between layers Pro

To move objects from one layer to

another, select the objects with the
selection tool.
The selected text in this example resides
in Layer 2.

Select the layer to which you wish to send

the objects.
Here, Layer 1 is selected.

Choose Object > Arrange > Send To Layer

1.

The object will be marked as belonging

to the selected layer. This change will be
stored in the PDF next time it is saved.

3
 Editing Graphics & Images 53

Re-sampling Images Pro

FlexiPDF can re-sample images to make the overall PDF smaller and quicker to load.
To re-sample all images in the document or across a range of pages choose:
Object > Images > Resample.

To re-sample specific images, select the images using the object select tool,
then choose Image > Resample from the right-mouse menu.

The Resample Images dialogue offers a similar set of options for the three classes of
images - colour, grey-scale and monochrome.
Converting colour images to grey-scale will reduce the overall size of the PDF file.
JPEG compression is a lossy format well suited to colour and grey-scale
photographs. When choosing JPEG, you can set the quality of the compressed image
anywhere from 1% (worst quality / smallest image size) to 100% (best quality /
largest image size).
PNG is a loss-less compression method better suited to colour and grey-scale
diagrams, charts and line drawings.

Remove all hidden image data

FlexiPDF is able to remove the hidden parts of images that are painted through a
clipping mask. Depending upon how the PDF was made, this can reduce the overall
size of the PDF quite dramatically.
 Editing Graphics & Images 54

Redacting Images Pro

FlexiPDF can permanently redact images, removing data that needs to be obscured
and making it impossible to retrieve the original data whilst leaving the remainder of
the image in-tact.
For details of how to redact text, see Redacting text on page 63.
1. Ensure the Redact toolbar is visible - View > Toolbars > Redact.

Select the Redact Image tool and

drag out a rectangular area to be
redacted.
Once drawn, the Object tool becomes
selected.
You do not need to be accurate when you
initially create the rectangle since you
can move, resize and rotate it just like any
other graphic object.
2

Continue adding further redaction areas in

the same way to images in your document.
The redaction only becomes permanent
when the PDF is saved. At this time,
FlexiPDF modifies the data of any
image covered by a redaction rectangle,
permanently obscuring those parts of the
image.

3
Redaction rectangles behave like normal
rectangle objects and can be moved,
resized, rotated or deleted.
Editing Text
Creating new text boxes
Editing text across columns & pages
Inserting special characters
On-screen display
Overset text
Performing a spell check
Recognising Text (Optical Character Recognition)
Redacting text

55
 Editing Text 56

On-screen display
1. Select the Text tool from the tool bar.
2. Click on a block of text to begin editing.
The formatting bar and ruler will activate and a text box will be drawn around the
text block being edited.

Caret (black bar)

Text is inserted here Formatting toolbar Ruler & Margins

Line-break
(Shift+Return)

Paragraph End
(Return)

Space character Text box with 4

(pink dot) resize handles

Notes
When you begin editing, spaces, paragraph marks and line-breaks will show up in
pink. These will become invisible again when you finish editing. Choose View > Text
> Non Printing Characters to disable this behaviour.
See Fonts In PDF for details of how certain fonts can make editing difficult.
Choose View > Text > Boundaries to outline all text boxes during text editing (Pro
only).
 Editing Text 57

Creating new text boxes

Using the Text Plus tool Standard Pro

A new, single-line text box can be added at any time.

Select the Text Plus tool from the

toolbar.
Click to create a new, fixed size
text box. As you type into this box it will
stretch.
The box can be resized by dragging on the
North, South, East, West resize handles as
1 normal.
Text boxes created this way will be
editable in all free versions of FlexiPDF.

Using the Text tool Standard Pro

New text can be added at any time by dragging out a new text box of the required
size.
Select the Text tool from the toolbar.
Click and drag to create a new text
box.

After a short delay, the text box will be

created ready for editing.
Choose the required font and size from the
formatting bar before editing.

2
 Editing Text 58

Editing text across columns & pages Standard Pro

Link multiple text boxes into a chain and reflow the text across the whole chain.

Select the Linked text tool from the

toolbar.
Click the mouse in the middle of
each column you wish to link together.
The box will highlight and a number will
be displayed in the middle. This number
shows the order in which text will flow
between the boxes.
1 If you click the same box twice it will be
removed from the flow and the rest of the
text boxes renumbered.
Keep adding further boxes by clicking the
mouse. You can change pages and add text
from different pages to the flow.

When you are ready to begin

editing select the Text tool from the
toolbar.

Notes
The text boxes will remain linked together even after you close and re-open the PDF
provided Store layout in PDF is enabled. See Store layout info in PDF on page 244.
 Editing Text 59

Overset text Standard Pro

As you are typing, FlexiPDF will enlarge the text box to ensure all your text will fit.
However, as soon as you resize the box yourself (by dragging the resize handles),
FlexiPDF stops this automatic adjustment and leaves the box at the size you set
it. From this point on, any that overflows the box will be hidden and a small, red
overset box will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the text box to warn you
that some text cannot be seen.
To reveal the overset text, make the text box larger or connect it to another text box so
the text can flow between them.

This text contains overset text. This is

indicated by the small red square in the
bottom right of the frame.
Resize the box to reveal the hidden text.
Alternatively,
1. click on the overset symbol
2. drag-out a new text box.
1
The overset text will flow from the old text box into the new one.

Notes
When saving a PDF, FlexiPDF will check for overset text and report the first instance
found.
The red boxes are aids only and will not appear when the PDF is viewed in any other
PDF viewer.
 60

Inserting special characters Standard Pro

Use the Character Palette dialogue to insert characters that are difficult to enter
directly from the keyboard.
Click on some text to begin editing using the Text tool.
Choose Text > Character Palette.

Use the font menu to choose

the required font from
the PDFs embedded fonts
and your computers system
Next/Previous font
fonts.

Click on a glyph to
select it.

Double-click to insert it
into the PDF.

Poorly formed Type3

fonts may display
upside-down. Press
Invert to rectify this.

Press to re-define
the meaning of badly
mapped glyphs.
See Remapping
fonts on page 95.
(Pro only)

Information about the selected glyph:

name as used in the PDF (not always available)

official Unicode description
type of the font from which it comes
 Editing Text 61

Performing a spell check Standard Pro

After editing it is useful to check the spelling of any new text added. You can check
the spelling of words in three ways:
check just the words in a text selection
check words in active text blocks
check the whole document (if there is no active text block)
The spell check dialogue box is accessed from Edit > Check Spelling menu or by
pressing the F7 function key.

The Spelling dialogue box

Misspelled word is shown here.

Type corrections here

Ignore this word and move onto next
suspect

Ignore this word for the rest of the check.

Adds suspect word to user dictionary

(See Appendix, Custom Spelling
Dictionaries)

Replace suspect word with correctly

spelled alternative.

Replace suspect word for correctly

spelled alternative this time and every
other time for this checking session.

Double-click on a suggestion to make the

change or single-click then press Change
All.
Language used for spell check. Click on the
link to change the current language.

Continued...
 Editing Text 62

Continued from previous page

Start the spell check by choosing

Edit > Check Spelling or press F7.

As each suspect word is displayed

in the dialogue box, FlexiPDF will also
highlight the word on the page.
You can type a new word into the
Change To box or select one of the words
FlexiPDF has suggested then press
1 Change.

When the selected text has been checked,

you will be asked if you wish to check the
rest of the PDF.

Notes
See Fonts In PDF for details of how fonts can affect the editing of text.
Be careful when changing text in paragraphs with unusual shapes (such as those that
flow around graphics). When the paragraphs are reflowed, their layout may be lost. See
Advanced Editing for methods of dealing with this.
If the words shown in the Suspect window seem garbled or include strange characters
it indicates that the text cannot be extracted correctly from the PDF. This is caused by
improper encoding of the PDFs fonts and cannot be remedied with FlexiPDF.
You can edit the contents of the spelling dictionary - see Custom Spelling
Dictionaries.
FlexiPDF will warn you if the replacement text cannot be rendered in the font used by
the misspelled text. In this case, you may have to choose a different font for the text.
Words that include numbers cannot be learnt by the spell checker. You can however,
skip checking such words using the Ignore All button.
 Editing Text 63

Redacting text Pro

FlexiPDF can be used to reliably redact text of a sensitive nature. A block of text can
be rendered illegible to the extent that its original content no longer forms part of the
page marking stream.
Any text you redact will also be redacted within the documents meta-data. This
includes any bookmarks or text within comments as well as hidden, non-user
accessible meta-data.

Using the Text tool, select the span

of text to be redacted. This can be
anything from a single word to an
entire story.
Then choose Text > Redact or press
Ctrl+Shift+R

The text has been redacted.

You can undo this change whilst editing,
but once you save the document the
redaction becomes permanent and can not
be undone.
Once saved, the text can never be retrieved
from the PDF. It is not hidden or obscured
but removed altogether.

To change the colour of future redactions

or to add a text label choose Text > Redact
Style.

3
 Editing Text 64

Recognising Text (Optical Character Recognition) Pro

If you want to edit the text in a PDF that is just a scanned image or vector-based
artwork then you need to perform OCR on the page(s) first.
FlexiPDF will prompt you to do this if you try to edit text and none exists on the
page. Alternatively, choose Document > Recognise Text (OCR).

Choose the range of pages you want to

process.
The bottom section of this dialogue is very
similar to that used for the Create From
Scanner dialogue. See Inserting pages
from a scanner on page 138 for details.

Because the OCR process removes

everything but recognised text on a page,
it will not run on pages which already
have editable text on them. Otherwise that
text would be lost.
If you need to do OCR on part of a page,
copy that part only to a new document
or page and perform OCR on that. Then
copy/paste the results back into the
original page.
Formatting Text
Background colour
Bold, overprint & italic text
Letter spacing
Line Spacing
Margins & indents
Paragraph spacing
Ruler units
Strike-through
Tabstops
Text Colours
Underline

65
 Formatting Text 66

Underline Standard Pro

You can underline a character or words using the Underline button available on the
formatting toolbar.

Select some text, or move the caret into a

word and press the underline button on the
formatting toolbar.

For more control over the width, colour

and position of the underline choose the
Text > Style > Underline Options menu
item.

Using the Underline Options dialogue box,

you can change the colour of an underline.

Continued...
 67

Continued from previous page

Example underline effects

Offset to -20 points

Offset +6 points on 12 point text

Weight of 0 points (hairline)

Adding a background to text

Notes
Text is always drawn after its underline decoration.
Text is always drawn before its strike-through decoration.
 68

Strike-through Standard Pro

Strike-through can be applied to any word or selection of words by choosing:

Text > Style > Strike-through whilst in text editing mode.

Additional options are available to control

the look of the strike-through decoration.
To access these choose:
Text > Style > Strike-through Options.

Example strike-through styles

Offset of -6 points on 12 pt text

Strike-through

Offset of 12 points

Strike-through
Weight of 6 points on 12 pt text

Strike-through
 Formatting Text 69

Margins & indents N Standard Pro

You can control the left, right and first-line indents for paragraph text. These indents
apply to the entire paragraph.
Select the Text tool and click on a block of text to begin editing.
Place the caret inside a paragraph or select a block of text spanning multiple
paragraphs.

White portions shows width

First-line indent of text block

Left margin (triangle shape) Right margin

Drag small rectangle beneath triangle to
move left & first-line margins together

First-line indent
To change a margin, drag the margin
triangle to the position required.
The picture shows the First Line Indent
triangle being dragged.
As you drag the margin, a dotted line
allows you to line-up the margin with
1 other objects on the page.

The first-line indent has been changed so

that the paragraph starts with an indent.

Continued...
 Formatting Text 70

Continued from previous page

Left margin & hanging indents

To create a hanging indent as shown in
image 2, move the left-margin inward
without moving the first-line indent.
If you drag the little rectangle underneath
the left margin arrow, then both the first-
line indent and left margin will move.

This paragraph now has a hanging indent.

Ruler units
You can change the rulers unit of measurement. Choose from Centimetres, Inches,
Points and Picas via the Preferences dialogue box.

Choose File > Preferences then click on the

Editing tab to change the rulers units.

Notes
For finer control of indents especially for text that flows around shapes, see Advanced
Editing.
 Formatting Text 71

Bold, overprint & italic text Standard Pro

FlexiPDF includes buttons to switch between normal, bold and italic versions of a
font. These buttons may not operate in the manner you expect since in some cases
FlexiPDF can simulate the effect required if the appropriate font is not available.

Actual Bold
Using the Text tool, select some text.
Press the Bold button or Ctrl+B.
If the bold version of the font is available,
FlexiPDF switches fonts.
In this example, the font has changed from
Times New Roman to Times New Roman
Bold, both available in the PDF.

Simulated Bold
If the bold versions of the selected
characters are not available in the
PDF, FlexiPDF will simulate bold by
overprinting the characters.
This text, written using Minion-Display
Regular has no bold equivalent in the PDF
or on disc.
Pressing Bold causes FlexiPDF to
overprint the text to simulate the bold
effect. Notice that the font name has not
changed in the font drop-down.

Continued...
 Formatting Text 72

Continued from previous page

Italic
If the italic version of the selected text is
not available in the PDF or on disc, then
FlexiPDF will show this warning.
FlexiPDF cannot simulate italic text in the
way that it can bold text.

Notes
When editing starts, FlexiPDF scans for overprinted text and classifies it as bold.
This behaviour can be disabled if it is taking too long or wrongly classifying text- see
Diagnostic editing mode on page 242
FlexiPDF does not simulate italic text.
Italics cannot be undone if the non-italic font is not available on disc or in the PDF.
Bold text cannot be undone if the plain font is not available, unless it was previously
simulated bold.
 Formatting Text 73

Background colour Standard Pro

You can specify that a text block has a white, black or transparent background colour.
This can be useful when you want new text to obscure existing, background text.

In this example we want to obscure the

name Wilhelm Korte on the scanned
page with a new name Hans Keppler.
The new text is shown in red due to the
Show changed text in preference. See
Default Editing Tool on page 240.

When placed on top of the existing

scanned name, both names are visible.

Choose Text > Text Box > Background

Colour > White to give the text box a white
background.
For simplicity FlexiPDF only offers black,
white or clear backgrounds.
For other colours, create a coloured
rectangle shape using the drawing tools
and place it between the new and old text.

3
 Formatting Text 74

Line Spacing Standard Pro

Use the Line Spacing dialogue box to set line spacing values other than Single, 1.5 and
Double.

While in text edit mode, choose

Text > Spacing > Line from the main menu
bar.
The Line Spacing dialogue box offers
At Least, Exactly & Multiple spacing
modes.

At Least
This paragraph shows the effect of the
At Least mode in which you tell FlexiPDF
the minimum gap between lines
(measured in points).
To stop the wheels line (shown left)
from colliding with the previous line,
FlexiPDF has automatically increased its
line spacing.

Exactly
This paragraph shows the affect of the
Exactly setting in which you tell FlexiPDF
the exact gap size between lines (measured
in points).
FlexiPDF has used exactly the same
spacing for each line regardless of whether
or not they collide.

Continued...
 Formatting Text 75

Continued from previous page

Multiple
Use Multiple mode to specify gaps such as
2.5 lines meaning that the gap will be at
least 2.5 times the line height.
Setting multiples of 1, 1.5 or 2 is the
same as pressing the single, 1.5 or double
spacing buttons on the formatting toolbar.
 Formatting Text 76

Paragraph spacing Standard Pro

You can create a gap between paragraphs in two ways:

1. Use the Text tool to insert blank lines between paragraphs
2. Use the Text tool and the Paragraph Spacing dialogue box available from the
Text > Spacing > Paragraph.

Using the second method allows you to dictate the exact size of gap in points - 1/72
inch.

There is no gap between any of the

paragraphs show left.

Choose Text > Spacing > Paragraph from

the main menu bar.
Here the value has been changed to 6
points.

The paragraphs are now 6 points apart.

Select multiple paragraphs to alter the
spacing of them all at once.

6 points gap

3
 Formatting Text 77

Letter spacing Standard Pro

The space between individual letters can be controlled to an accuracy of 1/1000 em.
This is useful for achieving layout effects such as fitting text into a particular area by
reducing or expanding the spacing.

Letter spacing is measured in ems with 1 em

being the width of a capital letter M in any
font.

1 em

Letter space & word space

Due to the nature of PDF documents, you can also control the gap between words
caused by space characters though this is generally not as widely used as letter
spacing.

Letter space Word space

The letter spacing dialogue box uses units

of 1/1000th em.
You can control the gaps between letters
and words by entering positive or negative
values.
The word spacing value is ignored when
text is fully justified.

Notes
Increase/decrease the letter spacing of selected text using the keyboard short cuts
Ctrl+Shift+] and Ctrl+Shift+[
 Formatting Text 78

Using letter spacing

Select the Text tool and begin
editing a block of text.
1 Select the characters whose spacing is to
be changed.

In this example the spacing is being

changed to 100/1000th em. This will change
the gap to be 1/10th of the width of the letter
M in this font.

The additional spacing is clearly visible

and the text now covers a wider area.
3

Using word spacing

Starting with the original text, the word
spacing could be changed instead.
1

The word spacing is changed to 400/1000th

em or 0.4 x width of M.

The new, enlarged gap between the words

is clearly visible.

3
 Formatting Text 79

Tabstops Standard Pro

Use tabstops to create sophisticated text layouts. Choose from left, centre and right
justified tabs with or without leader dots.

Creating/deleting tabs
Click on the ruler bar at the position you want to create a new tab.
Click & drag an existing tab-stop to move it to a new position.
Click & drag an existing tab right off the ruler bar to delete it.

left tab centre tab right tab

On-screen display

Tab characters are shown

as small pink arrows
during editing

Notes
Tabstops are remembered even after closing and re-opening a PDF.
As you add or move an existing tabs their numeric position is shown in the status bar
at the bottom of the window.
Tabstops may be positioned beyond the left & right margins of the text box.
 Formatting Text 80

Creating centre & right tabs

Position the mouse cursor over an existing
left tab then press the right mouse button
to see the Tab menu.
Choose Centre or Right to change the type.

Tab leaders
From the Tab Options dialogue box, you can set the leader character or modify the
way tabs wrap across lines.

Position the mouse cursor over the tabstop

you want to modify.
Press the right mouse button to display the
tab menu and choose Tab Options.
1

To add leader dots to your tabstop, type a

single . (period) into the Leader Character
text box.
You can type any single character into this
box for use as a tab leader.

2
 Formatting Text 81

Trailing tab leaders

Use the Tab Options dialogue to control the way tab leaders are drawn for wrapped
lines.

Position the mouse cursor over the tabstop

you want to modify.
Press the right mouse button to display the
tab menu and choose Tab Options.
1

When Trailing Leaders is checked,

FlexiPDF will add leader dots to the end
of a line which wraps because of a tab
stop.
is only for use with
Can be part of text field
templates destined for processing by Infix
2 Server.

Trailing leaders have been

added by FlexiPDF.

Notes
Trailing leaders cannot be selected or edited with the text or object select tools. The
caret will skip over them when moving through text.
Trailing tab leaders extend up to the right edge of the text box.
See Fields and tabstops on page 231 for details of the way fields interact with
tabstops.
 Formatting Text 82

Text Colours
All text has two colours associated with it - the outline colour (stroke) and the interior
(fill) colour. Either colour may be invisible (but not both).

T
The colours are set in the same way as for graphics.
See Changing colour & line width (RGB) on page 36

Outlined (stroked) with no fill Solid stroke and fill colour

colour
Advanced Editing
Automatic text fitting
Clipping mask creation
Clipping mask removal
Cloning objects across pages
Converting text into vector outlines
Deleting objects across pages
Editing Tabular Data
Flowing text around graphics
Merging text boxes
Numbering pages
Rebuilding text boxes
Remapping fonts
Splitting text boxes
Vertical text alignment

83
 Advanced Editing 84

Vertical text alignment Pro

FlexiPDF Professional can align text inside a text box so that it sits at the top, middle
or bottom of a text box. It can also make text automatically fit its text box by altering
various aspects of the text formatting (see Text Box Fitting)

While editing a text box using the

Text tool then choose:
Text > Align > Top.

The text shown here is top aligned which

is the default alignment.

Text > Align > Middle

Text > Align > Bottom

Notes
Alignment reverts to Top for linked text boxes.
 Advanced Editing 85

Automatic text fitting Pro

FlexiPDF can alter various aspects of text formatting in order to make text fit inside
its text box. Even when enabled, some text may be so long that it cannot be made to
fit. In this case, the text box will be marked as overset with a small red box, bottom-
right. See Overset text on page 59.

Edit a text box using the Text tool

then choose:
Text > Align > Full.

The text shown here is top aligned which

is the default alignment.

Use the Text Box Fitting Limits dialogue

box to select the aspects of formatting
which should be modified and by how
much.
During fitting, FlexiPDF tries altering the
enabled aspects of formatting in the order
they are listed in the dialogue.
The fitting process stops as soon as an
acceptable result has been achieved even if
all metrics have not yet been used.

Deactivate fitting metrics by unchecking

their check boxes.
The first two metrics simply adjust the
word and letter spacing of text to try to
achieve a fit.
The adjustment is between the supplied
limits and is in addition to any spacing
metrics already in effect on the text.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 86

Continued from previous page

The Leading Scale metric modifies the

leading and paragraph spacing of text
within the percentage limits supplied.
In this example, leading and paragraph
spacing could be increased from their
initial values by as much as 200% during
fitting (or reduced to 75%)

Adjust the gap between paragraphs

independently of the leading via this
metric.
Adjustments range between the Min and
Max point values supplied. If Min is set
to 0 then paragraph spacing will never
be reduced. If Max is set to 0, paragraph
spacing will never be increased.

The final metric adjusts the font size of all

text in a text box by the same number of
points in order to obtain best fitting.

Fitting may be restricted to text that

overflows its text box (overset text).
Checking this option ensures fitting will
not be applied to text that already fits -
even if there is a lot of empty space.
The alignment to be used on
underset text (text which
does not require fitting)

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 87

Continued from previous page

Default Top alignment for two linked text boxes

Full Alignment applied across both linked text boxes.

Notes
Text fitting is time consuming. It is not advisable to edit text with full fitting activated.
Apply it only once editing is complete.
Text Box alignment is remembered even after closing and re-opening PDFs.
Original formatting (font size, leading & spacing) is restored once full fitting is turned
off.
Unlike the other alignment modes, full text fitting can be applied across linked text
boxes.
 Advanced Editing 88

Flowing text around graphics Pro

In order to retain the contour of a paragraph that flows around a graphic the widths of
lines should be locked during editing.

Select the Text tool from the tool bar

and click inside the paragraph to
begin editing.

Select lines whose shape follows the

contour of the graphic. Lines that do not
follow the shape need not be selected.
In this example every line of the paragraph
needs to be selected.

Choose Text > Fix Line Width from the

menu bar to lock the selected lines.

Fixed lines have an addition border

showing the shape of the line.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 89

Continued from previous page

Make sure the alignment is correct.

FlexiPDF may have chosen the wrong
4 alignment due to unusual shape of the
paragraph.

Edit the text as normal.

Although the text will reflow, the shapes
of the fixed lines will not alter.
You can alter the shape of each line by
moving the left or right margin for that
line.
Finish editing as normal.
5 In this example, each line has been
reshaped to ensure the new text curves
around the blue oval.

Note
You cannot use Text > Fix Line Widths on rotated text.
 Advanced Editing 90

Rebuilding text boxes Pro

FlexiPDF can grab the text from multiple text blocks within a specific area of the
page, sort it and build a new text box containing all the grabbed text. This can be
useful for documents that have many disjoint text blocks making editing difficult.

Owing to the way in which this example

PDF was produced, FlexiPDF has created
many overlapping text blocks which make
editing difficult.
In some cases, lines from two distinct
columns of text have been grouped into a
single, extra wide, text block.
(View > Text > Boundaries has been
enabled to show the outline of each text
1 box)

Choose the Text tool and drag-out

a new text box large enough to
enclose all of the text you wish to
grab.
Choose Text > Text Box > Rebuild.

Any text enclosed by the new text box will

be stolen from the existing text boxes.
The stolen text is then sorted using a
simple x-y sort and placed into the new
text box.
Original text boxes that become empty as
3 a result will be deleted.
Usually the text placed in the new text
box will have more accurate paragraph
structure and be easier to edit.
 Advanced Editing 91

Merging text boxes Standard Pro

Vertically aligned text boxes may be joined together when you need text to reflow as
one.

In this example, FlexiPDF has split the

text into three boxes.
This will produce the wrong results when
the text is reflowed.

While using the Linked text tool

choose:
Text > Text Box > Merge Vertically to
join the three separate boxes into one.

Boxes in the same vertical row will be

joined into one.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 92

Continued from previous page

Text will now flow as a single column and

the results should look better.

Merging using the Object Tool

You can also join paragraphs by using the Object tool.
Select the paragraphs in the order in which you want them joined. Click on
each with the Object tool whilst holding the Shift key. This will add each new text
block to the selection.
Once you have selected all the boxes you want, choose Text > Text Box > Merge
Vertically.

FlexiPDF will only merge text blocks that are aligned in the same column and that
flow from top to bottom.
If FlexiPDF doesnt appear to be merging in the way you want it to, check the order
in which you have selected the text blocks or try using the Linked text tool instead
which offers more of a visual cue to the process.
 Advanced Editing 93

Splitting text boxes Standard Pro

Text blocks can be split at paragraph boundaries. This can make editing large blocks
of text faster and helps to avoid reflowing text that does not need it.

Use the Linked text tool to select the

text box to be split.
The example shows a large block of
text with complicating formatting.
To edit just the middle paragraph without
reflowing any of the other text, the text
box should be split.

Choose Text > Text Box > Split Paragraphs.

The single box is split so that each
paragraph becomes a box, not linked to
any other.
Although the new text boxes are not
linked together, for clarity they have been
linked together in this image to highlight
the affect of splitting.

2
Continued...
 Advanced Editing 94

Continued from previous page

After splitting, FlexiPDF switches

to the Text tool ready for editing.

Splitting using the Object Tool

You can also split paragraphs by using the Object tool.
Select the paragraphs to be split in any way - dragging out a selection box,
Shift-clicking, Edit > Select All etc.

Once you have selected all the boxes you want, choose Text > Text Box > Split
Paragraphs.
 Advanced Editing 95

Remapping fonts Pro

Every font in PDF includes a mapping from the glyph shapes to their meaning.
Without this mapping editing would not be possible nor would content export.
In some PDF documents these mappings are incorrect or corrupted. You can train
FlexiPDF to deal with particular mapping problems as they arise. This training does
not fix the PDF but does enable editing, content export and translation.
Choose Text > Remap Fonts to open the font mapping dialogue box.
The dialogue box is similar to the Character Palette dialogue (see Inserting special
characters on page 60)

The glyph shape 6

Currently maps to &

(an incorrect mapping)

The meaning of the selected glyph. The mapping for each glyph is shown in
When editing or exporting, FlexiPDF
will treat the glyph as if it were one of three colours:
Unicode 38.
Mapping contained in the PDF.
(May or may not be correct)

Bad or missing mapping.

User supplied mapping.

(A remapped glyph)

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 96

Continued from previous page

Editing font mappings

The quickest way to edit or fix a font map is to select the first incorrectly mapped
glyph in the map, then press the key to which is should map. The mapping will be set
and the next glyph will be selected. Repeat until all incorrect glyphs are mapped.

In this example. 6 characters have already

been re-mapped. The selected glyph has
moved into h.
Press h on the keyboard to change the
mapping to h.

The mapping for h has been recorded and

now, the e glyph has been selected.
If the destination character cannot be
entered from the keyboard such as (latin
small ligature fi) then enter its Unicode
value into one of the edit boxes - FB01 is
the code for in hexadecimal.

Notes
Mappings are stored in a mappings file maintained by FlexiPDF.
Mappings are applied whenever a document with a matching font is opened.
Mappings are used during editing and when exporting PDF to other formats.
 Advanced Editing 97

Numbering pages
You can renumber a range of pages by cloning a page number text field on each page
in the range using the cloning facility. Each time the text field is placed on a page in
the range, it is incremented by one.
Page number fields do not update when pages are added or removed from a PDF.
Instead you should re-clone the numbering on the affected pages.
See Cloning objects across pages on page 98 for details of cloning objects (not
just page number fields) across pages.

In this example we want to have a

numbered footer at the bottom of each
page, of the form (Page n).
Using the Text tool, create and edit
the footer on the first page of the
range.
Choose Text > Insert Page Number to
insert the text field where the page number
should be.

Choose the Numbering Style for the

number.
Note that whatever format is chosen, the
font used must encode all the characters
that will be required as the number
changes across the page range.
You can verify this by looking at the font
using the character palette (choose
Text > Character Palette).

Finally, specify the Numbering Offset.

In the example shown, a numbering offset
of -3 has been given which means the first
page number generated will be 1.

Since it is being inserted on physical

page 4 of the PDF, with a numbering
offset of -3, the first page number
generated will be 1.
 Advanced Editing 98

Cloning objects across pages Pro

FlexiPDF can replicate a selection of objects across a range of pages. The objects are
placed at the same position on each page in the range, on top of any existing contents.
This facility can be used for adding repeating page furniture such as logos, headers,
footers and page numbers.

This example will show how to add a

header and footer rule plus a page number
to a 300+ page book.

New header rule (horizontal line)

New footer rule

New page number

style, replacing existing
number.

Using the Line tool add a horizontal

line to the top of the page. Use Copy
and Paste to place a similar line in
the footer region.
Both lines are then selected using
the Object tool (by clicking on each
line whilst holding Shift to add to
the selection).
Choose Edit > Clone Across Pages.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 99

Continued from previous page

Next, specify the range of pages to be

covered. In this case we wish to place the
borders on all pages from 3 onwards.
You could restrict the range to even or
odd pages only if you wanted to apply
different graphics to each set of pages.
Selected Delete existing objects to remove
any existing lines at this position before
placing the new lines.

In this example, we are going to change

the style of the page numbering - currently
a simple number.
Selected the existing page number
using the Text tool and insert Page
in front of the number.
Then delete the original number (4) and
choose Text > Insert Page Number which
will display the page numbering dialogue.
3

Choose the numbering scheme for the new

page number.
You can also provide a Numbering Offset
that gets added to the page number. Leave
this as 0 for no offset.
Press OK to insert the page number.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 100

Continued from previous page

The finished format, showing the page

number, all centre aligned.
The number is actually a field which is
why FlexiPDF shows it highlighted. This
highlighting does not affect the PDF and
can be turned off by choosing View > Text
> Field Shading.

During the clone operation this field will

update as it is copied to each page in order
5 to show the correct page number.

The final change is to change it to an italic

version of the Constantia font.
Since the page number field will be cloned
across a wide range of pages, all numbers
from 0-9 will eventually be needed.
We need to ensure the font we choose has
all numbers otherwise the cloning process
will fail part way through.
6 You can check the characters available in a
font by choosing Text > Character Palette.

Carefully select both lines and text

using the Object tool, clicking on
each whilst holding Shift to ensure
they are added to the selection.
Choose Edit > Clone Across Pages.

Page with top and bottom

lines plus page number
selected.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 101

Continued from previous page

Select the Page range for the operation.

In this example, we will be cloning from
page 3 onwards, even though we drew the
original items on page 4.

Select Delete existing objects to ensure

that any existing page numbers are
removed before applying the new version.
Press Clone to begin the process.

FlexiPDF will show the progress of the

operation as it goes.
Every 100 or so pages, the partially
complete document will be saved to disc
(under a new name) and the process will
resume.
9 The finished document will also have a
new name.

Notes
Page number fields are not updated when pages are inserted or deleted in a document.
To update page numbers, perform the clone operation again ensuring that Delete
existing objects is selected.
Hyperlinks and annotations are excluded from the cloning process.
If you want a different object for even and odd pages, perform the clone operation
twice, once with the odd-page header and restrict the page range to odd pages only
(see step 2 above) then again with the even-page header with the page range restricted
to even pages only.
 Advanced Editing 102

Deleting objects across pages Pro

FlexiPDF can automatically delete objects in the same location across a range of
pages. This is very handy for removing unwanted logos, header, footers or other page
furniture.
You are strongly advised to make a backup of your document before using this
facility.

Select the object(s) to be deleted

using the Object select tool.
In this case, a single logo has been
selected that repeats across most of the
document.
Any objects matching or entirely
contained within the individual bounding
boxes of objects in the selection, will be
deleted from the pages you specify next.
1

Choose Edit > Delete Across Pages.

Choose the page range you wish to affect
and whether you want to limit the process
to just even or odd pages.
Press Delete.

You can halt the process part way through

by pressing Stop.

3
 Advanced Editing 103

Converting text into vector outlines

To ensure that a PDF prints correctly and avoid any possibility of font problems at the
printer, you can convert text to vector outlines.
Some points to note about the conversion:
converted text will no longer be editable or searchable by FlexiPDF or any other
application without the intervention of OCR
outlined characters will not benefit from font hinting which is used when viewing at
low resolutions. However, at the kind of resolutions used by printers, font hinting is
not necessary.
after conversion, you are guaranteed to avoid all font related printing problems
since fonts will no longer play a part in the PDF (it will just be pages of line-art).
the conversion encompasses all text across all pages of the PDF and cannot be
undone.
To covert text to outlines choose Text > Create Outlines.
 Advanced Editing 104

Clipping mask creation Pro

Any object or group of objects can have a clipping mask applied. The mask ensures
only parts of the object are visible. This is often useful for images where you may
want to hide the background for example.

In this example, we want to apply a

clipping mask to the image of the car.

A shape is drawn using the drawing tools.

This shape will be used to make the
clipping mask.
Any path may be used as clipping path,
not simply those created using the built-in
drawing tools.
2

With the new shape selected, choose

Object > Clipping Mask > Convert To Clip.

The shape will then become a pink

outline.
Now select both the clip path and the
image and choose
3 Object > Clipping Mask > Add To Clip.

Continued...
 Advanced Editing 105

Continued from previous page

The image has now been added to the

clipping mask. The parts of the image that
are outside the mask are not displayed.
You can still move the mask and objects
within it independently.

Notes
Any empty clipping masks are automatically removed when a PDF is opened.
Clip paths have no line width, fill or stroke colour
Clip paths can be moved independently of the objects being clipped.
To add multiple objects to the clipping path, group them first using Object > Group.
 Advanced Editing 106

Clipping mask removal Pro

Clipped objects can be moved independently of their clip masks. Objects can also be
popped from their clip masks revealing the entire object.

Choose the Object tool.

The car image (selected) is clipped
by the oval clipping mask (shown
in pink).

To remove the image from its clipping

mask choose :
Object > Clipping Mask > Remove From Clip.

The image is now fully visible.

The clipping mask still exists and is shown
in pink behind the image.

Note
Clip masks only become visible (outlined in pink) when the Object Select tool is
active.
 Advanced Editing 107

Editing Tabular Data

To make it easier to edit text in tables without disturbing layout, mark-up the tabular
region with a Table Box. See Exporting tabular information on page 191 for details
of how to do this.
For maximum effect, it is best to do the marking-up of tables before you begin your
first edit on the page.
FlexiPDF will try to make each cell into a separate paragraph. Though this will assist
with editing, it is not a full table editor but just a collection of text boxes. If you need
to add or move rows, use the Object tool to select and move columns or rows of text
boxes.
Find & Replace
Find & redact
Find & replace fonts
Find & replace in bookmarks
Find & replace in comments
Find & replace in files
Find & replace in hyperlinks
Find & replace in long documents
Find & replace text
Find & replace text (advanced)
Find & replace text styles
Text reflow modes

108
 Find & Replace 109

Find & replace text Standard

Use the Find and Replace dialogue boxes to search for and replace words
and phrases in a text selection, across a range of pages or throughout an entire PDF.
During text replacement FlexiPDF will reflow the affected text. It is important you
tell FlexiPDF how you want the text reflowed as, depending upon your document, it
may drastically alter its layout. See Text reflow modes on page 120 for details.
If you need to target text written using a particular font or text style, see Find &
replace text styles on page 113.

Type the word(s) you

are searching for Press to see
here. previous searches

Click here
to limit
searching to
specific pages

Check this box if Unchecked, a search Opens an

capitalisation is important for in would match interactive listing
to your search running and of all found text
ingrowing

Notes
If you have a word selected when the dialogue box opens, the word will be copied into
the Find box automatically.
Be careful when changing text in paragraphs with unusual shapes (such as those that
flow around graphics). When paragraphs are reflowed, their layout may be altered. See
Flowing text around graphics on page 88 for methods of avoiding this.
 Find & Replace 110

Find & replace fonts

FlexiPDF can change the fonts used throughout a document using the Find and
Replace Font dialogue box. This dialogue offers a simplified interface to the more
sophisticated facilities of the Find & Replace dialogue in FlexiPDF Professional.

Before doing a font replacement ensure

that you have a recent backup of
your document since the operation is
potentially disruptive.
To begin choose
Edit > Find & Replace > Replace Font
or choose Document > Fonts then select a
particular font and press Replace.

Choose the target font from any of those

currently used in the document.
Alternatively, you can enter a wildcard
expression in order to match a family of
fonts.
For example, Times* will match all fonts
whose names start with Times such as
Time-Roman, Times-Roman Italic etc.

F? would match all two-letter font names

such as F0, F1 etc.

Continued...
 Find & Replace 111

Continued from previous page

Choose the replacement font from the

drop-down list. You may choose any font
currently used in the document or any
system font on your computer.
Whatever font you choose, especially if it
is one currently used in your document,
be aware that it may not have all the
characters (glyphs) needed. FlexiPDF will
warn you during the replacement if this
occurs.

Click Replace All to begin the operation.

FlexiPDF will process the entire
document, examining all text. If you
want to restrict the process to a specific
page range, text box or text selection,
use the advanced features of the Find &
Replace dialogue available in FlexiPDF
Professional
Hit the Stop button at any time to abort the
process.

Once finished, FlexiPDF will report the

number of runs of text that were modified.
If more than 100 pages were processed,
FlexiPDF will have saved the document as
it went along, renaming it each time.
Save the finished version now.

5
 Find & Replace 112

Find & replace text (advanced) Pro

FlexiPDF Professionals Find & Replace dialogue box is a more sophisticated version
of that offered by FlexiPDF (see Find & replace text on page 109). Not only can
you search and replace text, you can modify the styles of text and change the contents
of hyperlink URLs.

Click the hyperlinks to limit

See Find & replace text
searches to a particular style
styles on page 113 for
and to set the style of the
details of the Find: and
replacement text
Replace: check boxes.

When a result is found, the page can be Check to activate wildcard matching.
zoomed to ensure the text is large enough Available wildcards are:
to read. Disable this if you want the page * to match zero or more characters
zoom to remain fixed. + to match 1 or more characters
? to match a single character
 Find & Replace 113

Find & replace text styles Pro

You can restrict your target text by font, colour or size. You can also dictate the
font, size and colour of the replacement text. You can even change the style of text
without changing the text itself (more flexible than Find & replace fonts on page
110).
Before doing any kind of replacement operation ensure that you have a recent
backup of your document since automated operations are potentially disruptive.

To change all the character names in a

Shakespeare play so that they appear in
blue.
Using the text edit tool, select an
example of the text to be changed.

Minion-Italic, 7 point

Choose Edit > Find & Replace > Replace to

open the Replace dialogue box.
The selected text will appear in the Find
box.
2

To find all text with the same style,

uncheck the Find check box. The target
text will grey-out.

Next, click on the Character format

hyperlink to open the formatting dialogue
box.
3

Continued...
 Find & Replace 114

Continued from previous page

The Find Format dialogue reflects the

formatting of the text from your initial
selection, though it remains inactive until
you press OK.
4 Press OK to activate the formatting.

Whenever a format is active for a search,

a brief summary of the styles chosen is
shown next to the Find: text box.

Click on the hyperlink next to the Replace

text box to open the Replace Format
dialogue box.

3
5

The Replace Format dialogue box displays

the formatting of the initial text selection.
Click on Apply Style since we want to
change the colour of text.
Click on the Fill colour check box to
enable the colour picker button next to it.
6 Click on the colour button to choose a new
colour.
(In the example image a blue colour has
already been chosen)

Continued...
 Find & Replace 115

Continued from previous page

Reflow and alignment changes should

be kept to a minimum (we only want to
change text colour).
Ensure that Reflow is New Text Only and
Alignment is Left.
7 Then press OK to activate the formatting.

Uncheck the box next to Replace. The

replace text box will grey-out.
This means we do not want the text itself
changed, only its style.
8 Press the OK button to activate the format
settings.

The Replace dialogue box

should look something like
this.
Press Replace All to start
the process which may take
9 some time to finish.

Continued...
 Find & Replace 116

Continued from previous page

Once finished, all character names have

been changed to blue throughout the PDF.
The same technique can be used to change
the font, font size or stroke colour of
specific text.

10

Notes
To remove any Find formatting click the formatting hyperlink next to the Find text box
and set both Font & Font Size to Any then uncheck both colour check boxes.
Replace formatting can be disabled in the same way as detailed above.
FlexiPDF will save a partial copy of the PDF every 100 or so pages during a long find
& replace operation.
To cancel a find & replace operation, press Escape or close the dialogue box.
 Find & Replace 117

Find & replace in bookmarks

To search through or replace bookmark titles in the current document:

Ensure the bookmarks panel is visible by

choosing View > Bookmarks.
Click on the Binoculars icon in the toolbar
inside the bookmarks panel

If text is selected in the current document (using the Text tool) when the binoculars
button is pressed, it will be copied into the Find text box ready for searching.

Check to activate wild card matching.

Available wild cards are:
* to match zero or more characters
+ to match 1 or more characters
? to match a single character
 Find & Replace 118

Find & replace in comments

To search through or replace comments in the current document:
Ensure the comment panel is visible by
choosing View > Comments.
Click on the Binoculars icon in the toolbar
inside the panel.

If text is selected in the current document (using the Text tool) when the binoculars
button is pressed, it will be copied into the Find text box ready for searching.

Check to activate wild card matching.

Available wild cards are:
* to match zero or more characters
+ to match 1 or more characters
? to match a single character
 Find & Replace 119

Find & replace in hyperlinks Pro

You can perform find and replace operations on the content of hyperlinks in the
current document. This can be useful for changing the web address of hyperlinks.
You can also perform hyperlink replacement across files - see Find & replace in
files on page 125.

Choose Edit > Find & Replace > Find and

Replace in Hyperlinks.

For example, entering http: into the

Find text box should match all web-based
1 hyperlinks in the page range.

Press Find All which will begin the search

and open the Find Results window.
As the find progresses, results will be
added to the Find Results window.
Once finished, double-clicking on a result
2 will display the hyperlink in the main
window of FlexiPDF.

Click here
to limit
searching to
specific pages

Check to activate wild card matching.

Available wild cards are:
* to match zero or more characters
+ to match 1 or more characters
? to match a single character
 Find & Replace 120

Text reflow modes Standard Pro

FlexiPDF offers three modes for controlling the

way text is reflowed during search and replace:

New Text Only

This mode is useful when dealing with tabular
data, headers, footers or other single lines where
retaining the original spacing and gaps between words is important.
The minimum reflow is done. The new text is left, centre or right aligned within the
space occupied by the text being replaced.
In this mode, you may end up with words printed on top of each other if the
replacement text is much longer than the original.

Containing Line Only (default mode)

This mode is useful when you wish to cause minimum changes to existing
paragraphs whilst ensuring changed lines blend in correctly.
Only the line(s) containing the search text will be reflowed after replacement. Lines
can be left, centre or right aligned regardless of the alignment of their paragraphs.
The auto option will use the containing paragraphs current alignment.

Containing Paragraph
The entire paragraph (and those near it) may be reflowed according to their current
alignment. You cannot dictate the alignment used in this mode.
If a paragraph grows longer after reflowing, some of the text may become overset
(See Overset text on page 59). This is signified by a red square on the bottom-
right edge of the text box. You may need to make the text box bigger to accommodate
the text once the search and replace is complete.

Reset Letter Spacing

When only the font is changed as a result of a search & replace operation the existing
letter spacings may not be appropriate for the new font.
Checking Reset Letter Spacing will cause both inter-character and inter-word spacing
to be set to 0 for every character affected.

Continued...
 Find & Replace 121

Continued from previous page

Reflow: New Text Only

In this example, the header text is to be
altered whilst retaining the gap between
the page number and the text.

Choose the Edit > Find & Replace > Replace menu item.

2
Fill in the Find and Replace text boxes.
Press the blue, underlined hyperlink next to the Replace text box.

To ensure that the new text is right-aligned

and that the page number is left where it
is -
Choose New Text Only from the Reflow
pop-up menu
Choose Right from the Alignment pop-up
menu
3

Continued...
 Find & Replace 122

Continued from previous page

Reflow: New Text Only

Original text Editing Graphics & Images 13

Align: Left
New text is aligned with the start of the
old text. If new text is longer than old, Editing Graphics 13
it may overflow and collide with page
number.

Align: Centre
New text is aligned with the centre of the
old text. If it becomes longer it will extend Editing Graphics 13
beyond the original left/right bounds of
the old text.

Align: Right
New text is aligned with the end of the
old text. If new text is longer than old, it Editing Graphics 13
may extend beyond the left extent of the
original text.

Reflow: Containing Paragraph

The entire line is reflowed and left
justified. The page number is moved
Editing Graphics 13
during the reflow.

Continued...
 Find & Replace 123

Continued from previous page

Reflow: Containing Line Only

Cigar Club -> Smoking Society

In this example, Cigar Club is replaced

by Smoking Society, reflowing only one
line of the paragraph.

1
To make room, the words have been
moved closer together on the first line.
None of the other lines has been altered.

Potential Problems
Cigar Club -> Old Smoking Society

There is not enough room for the

replacement text on the line so words have
begun to run-in to each other.

This is the same replacement using

Alignment: Left.

The text has grown beyond the edge of the

text box.

Notes
Use Reflow: Containing Paragraph option only if you are confident that reflowing the
paragraph will not destroy any existing indentation or special layout.
When using Reflow: New Text Only the new text may collide with existing text if it is
longer than the original text.
 Find & Replace 124

Find & replace in long documents Standard Pro

During find & replace in a long PDF (more than 200 pages), FlexiPDF will save the
partially-complete PDF every 200 pages.
On completion, the finished PDF MyDoc.pdf will be renamed MyDoc-01.pdf. The
original PDF (before the find & replace) will remain unchanged.
If you perform further search and replace operations on the new document, it will be
renamed MyDoc-02.pdf and so on.
 Find & Replace 125

Find & replace in files Pro

FlexiPDF Professional can automatically perform a Find & Replace (text or

hyperlinks) operation on multiple files.
Choose Edit > Find & Replace > Replace In Files to open the dialogue. There does not
have to be a document already open in order to access the dialogue.

Upper part of the dialogue

is like the Replace dialogue
box. See Find & replace text
(advanced) on page 112
except that it also includes a
hyperlinks check box.

Lower part of the dialogue

is where you add files to be
searched.

Click to add files to the list

Click to add all the

PDF files in a folder
(and its sub-folders)

Deletes files from

the list (does not
delete them from
disc)

Click to open and view the

selected document.
If already processed, FlexiPDF
will open the processed
version

Continued...
 Find & Replace 126

Continued from previous page

Once your search has been setup and you

have added some files to the list, press
Replace All.

Setup Folders
The Setup Folders dialogue will open.
Supply a location in which to save the
processed files.
If you do not use this option, your original
files will be over written (a backup will
not be made).
You are strongly advised to ensure you
have a backup of the original files.
4

You may also give an optional folder for

error files.
Errors can occur when there is no suitable
font for substitution for example.
5

Continued...
 Find & Replace 127

Continued from previous page

During the search, the dialogue shows the

number of changes made, and current page
being searched.

The current PDF being searched is

highlighted in the list of files.

When doing Find In Files, pressing Show

Results will display the results list. This
list is updated as the search proceeds.
Once the search has finished, double
clicking on a result will open the relevant
PDF and show the text.
 Find & Replace 128

Find & redact Pro

FlexiPDF can redact all occurrences of words and phrases throughout a document.
This redaction is deep and also occurs in bookmarks, comments and any other meta-
data contained within the document.
The redaction becomes permanent only after the document is saved.

Select the text to be redacted then choose

Edit > Find & Replace > Redact All or press
Ctrl+Alt+R

Press Redact Next to do one

redaction at a time.
Press Style to alter the colour
used for redaction or to apply
a label.
2
Check to activate wild card matching.
Available wild cards are:
* to match zero or more characters
+ to match 1 or more characters
? to match a single character

Apply a colour or label to redacted text.

The style is applied to new redactions
only.
Page Operations
Cropping Pages
Inserting new pages
Inserting pages from a scanner
Inserting pages from other documents
Page labels
Page margins
Placing a page from another document
Reordering pages
Resizing pages
Thumbnail View
Watermarking pages

129
 Page Operations 130

Thumbnail View
All of the page manipulation functions can be found in the Documents > Pages sub-
menu. Many also appear on the thumbnail views toolbar.
Sometimes it may be easier or quicker to use the thumbnail panel rather than the
main menu to access these functions. For example, deleting a range of pages by
selecting multiple thumbnails then pressing the delete button.

To show the thumbnail panel, choose View

> Thumbnails.

It may take a moment to render the

thumbnails for a document.
Delete pages The thumbnails represent the state of each
page when first loaded, not necessarily
Replace pages
their current state after editing.
Extract pages

Insert pages from scanner

Insert pages from another PDF

Create new (blank) pages

Rotate pages

Many of the toolbar buttons can be applied to multiple pages. To select multiple pages
in the thumbnail panel, click on the first page in your range, then press the Cursor Up
or Down keys together with the Shift key to extend the selection.
You may only select adjacent pages.
 Page Operations 131

Cropping Pages
Trim the size of a page or range of pages using either the Crop Tool or the Auto-
Crop facility. Cropping does not remove anything from a PDF, it just limits what is
displayed by PDF viewers and printers.

Using the Crop Tool

Select the crop tool from the toolbar then drag-out a box to represent the area
that will remain after cropping. You do not need to drag out exactly the right
shape since you can resize the box after the initial drag.
When you are happy with the area covered, press Return on the keyboard.

Crops can cover a range of pages.

You may also restrict cropping to only
even or only odd pages - handy when
your pages need different crops for book
binding.
If the Set Page Media Box check-box is
checked, this value will be set to match
the crop. This setting is probably not
relevant to most PDF users.

Auto-Crop Pro

Choose Document > Pages > Auto-Crop to reduce the size of a range of pages to match
their contents. For example, if a page contained only a photograph and a caption, then
after auto-crop, the crop region would be set to the bounding box around those two
objects.

Relaxing on the beach Relaxing on the beach

 Page Operations 132

Inserting new pages Standard Pro

You can insert any number of new pages into any PDF document.
Open a PDF then choose Document > Pages > Insert New from the main menu bar.

Choose how many new pages you

want to add (the default is 1).

Choose whether you want to insert

the new page before or after an
existing page.

Choose Use Current Size to make

the new pages the same size as the
currently displayed page.

The remaining options are the same

as those in the New Document
dialogue box.

Inserting a new page

After the First Page

1 2 3 4 5

Inserting a new page before

Last Page

Notes
The size of new pages is determined by the page being viewed when the instruction is
given.
 Page Operations 133

Reordering pages Standard Pro

A page or group of pages may be moved from one part of a PDF to another. You may
have to alter page numbers printed on the pages after relocating.
You can re-order using the dialogue shown below, or by dragging page thumbnails in
the Thumbnails pane. Choose View > Thumbnails to make the pane visible. Then select
or Shift-select (for multiple) pages and drag them to a new point in the thumbnail list.

Using the Re-order Page dialogue

Open a PDF and choose:
Document > Pages > Re-order.

Choose the range of pages you wish to

relocate.
Then choose where you want them to be
moved to.

1 2 3 4 5

Relocating pages 1
and 2 to page 4.

3 4 1 2 5

Notes
See Numbering pages on page 97 for details of re-numbering moved pages.
 Page Operations 134

Resizing pages Standard Pro

A page or group of pages can be resized. This scales all objects on the page then
adjusts the media box (paper-size).

Open a PDF and choose:

Document > Pages > Resize.

Choose to scale X & Y axis independently

or click Constrain Proportions to maintain
the aspect ratio.
Choose the units for scaling - percent,
inches, points or centimetres

Uncheck this box to re-size the page only; objects

on the page will not be altered. This is especially
useful for re-sizing empty pages.

This illustrations shows a page being

resized by 50% on both axes.

11.00 in

5.50 in

8.27 in 4.13 in
 Page Operations 135

Inserting pages from other documents Standard Pro

Pages from one document can be imported into the current PDF. There are two
methods for doing this:

With your PDF already open, choose

Document > Pages > Insert From Document
then choose the PDF you wish to insert
using the file selection dialogue.
Or
Drag & drop a PDF file onto your open
document.

After dropping the file, choose:

Insert the PDF.

Continued...
 Page Operations 136

Continued from previous page

Finally, specify where you want the new

document inserted.

Inserting a group of pages

After the First Page

1 2 3 4 5

Inserting a group of
pages Before the
Last Page
 Page Operations 137

Placing a page from another document Pro

You can place the contents of an entire page from another PDF into the current page
of your PDF. There are two ways of doing this:

Method 1:
With your PDF already open, choose:
File > Place PDF.

Then choose the PDF you want to place.

If the PDF you are placing has multiple
1 pages, choose the page you wish to place
(if it has only one page, you will not be
prompted to choose)

Method 2: Drag & drop

You can drag & drop a PDF file onto your
open document to place a page.
You will then have the choice of opening
or inserting the new PDF.

Choose the Place a page option then press

OK.

3
 Page Operations 138

Inserting pages from a scanner Pro

You can use your scanner to insert pages into an existing PDF or create an entirely
new PDF by using File > Create From Scanner. The two operations a use very similar
dialogue boxes.

With your PDF already open, choose:

Document > Pages > Insert From Scanner.

Choose your scanner from the Device: list

of available input devices.
1 If your device is an automated document
scanner capable of scanning many pages
unattended, change Source to Automatic
Document Feeder.

Next choose where you want to new

page(s) to be placed. By default they will
be inserted after the last page.
This section of the dialogue isnt visible
when using Create From Scanner.
2

If Recognise Text (OCR) is enabled,

FlexiPDF will try to convert any text
found in the scan into real text and not
just an image of text.
If you only want the image itself, if the
3 image is a photograph for example, do not
*OCR = Optical Character Recognition check this option.

If you want to be able to easily edit the

recognised text and make use of it again,
choose Editable Text as the PDF Style.
If instead, you want the PDF to be
searchable but to look as close to the
4 original as possible, choose Searchable
Image.

Continued...
 Page Operations 139

Continued from previous page

Comparing PDF styles when using OCR

Original Page Editable Text

Text is easily edited

Small file size
Searchable

Original look is lost

scanned...

The OCR process tries to recognised text

in the scanned image and converts it to
real, editable text.
Diagrams and graphics in the original will
not be preserved. Photos and screen-shots
scanned...

may be preserved though not always.

The text can be edited and reused just as
text in a normal PDF.

Searchable Image

In a Searchable Image, only the scanned image

is displayed. Text that has been recognised in
the scan is placed out-of-sight, behind the image
where it cannot be seen, but can still be indexed
and searched.
Often there will be mistakes made by the
recognition process which could causes searches
to be inaccurate. You can correct these mistakes
using the OCR corrections facility. See OCR
corrections on page 14 for details.

Retains original look of document

Searchable
Larger file size
Not easily edited.
 Page Operations 140

Page margins Pro

FlexiPDF Professional can add margins to a range of pages to make editing easier.
These margins act as fixed guides. See Layout guides on page 49 for an
explanation of how guides work.

Choose Document > Pages > Margins.

Enter your required margins in the boxes.
Checking Tie values together ensures that
all boxes have the same value. This works
when you move from one box to the next
by pressing tab or clicking the mouse.

Notes
To change the units used (cm in this case), close the dialogue and choose
File > Preferences and click on the Editing tab.
After adding margins, they will become visible on all pages. Choose
View > Grid & Guides > Hide Guides to hide them.
Margins, like other guides, are retained in the PDF for FlexiPDF to use next time you
edit the document. They will have no affect on and will not be visible in any other PDF
viewer.
 Page Operations 141

Watermarking pages Pro

You can apply a fixed watermark to the foreground or background of the pages in a
document. The watermark itself is defined in another PDF and can contain anything
you like such as a logo or text.

With the document to be watermarked

already open, choose:
Document > Watermark > Add.

Into From PDF enter the filename of the

PDF you wish to use as the watermark or
press the Browse button.
Press Built in to show the selection of
predefined watermark PDFs that ships
with the software.
1 If the chosen PDF has multiple pages,
FlexiPDF will use only the first as the
watermark.

Choose whether you want the watermark

to appear in front of or behind the existing
page contents on each page.
2 You can also choose to resize the
watermark so that it fits the pages it is
being applied to. When resizing, FlexiPDF
scales the watermark so that its crop box
matches the destination page.

When scaling is enabled,

the crop box of the
watermark is scaled to
A
match the destination
page.

If scaling were not used in

these two examples, they
would both give the same
result - picture A.

Continued...
 Page Operations 142

Continued from previous page

The watermark can be shown with various

degrees of transparency from completely
solid to very faint.

Finally choose the page range over which

you wish to apply the watermark then
press Apply.
4 You can have different watermarks for
different parts of your document.

The finished page with a foreground,

solid, Approved watermark.

Notes
Watermarks behave like locked objects. If unlocked, a watermark can be edited as a
normal object.
A page may contain only one watermark at a time. When adding a new watermark to a
page FlexiPDF first removes any existing watermark.
 Page Operations 143

Page labels Pro

A page label is an optional number or phrase displayed along with each page in
FlexiPDF or other PDF viewers. It is independent of, though often related to, the
physical page number printed on each page.
FlexiPDF displays page labels in the status bar.

FlexiPDF status bar showing page label Quick Start: 9

Editing page labels

Choose Document > Pages > Labels or
double-click the page label in the status
bar to open the Page Labels dialogue box.

1
Clicking on an existing label will copy
its details into the edit boxes beneath the
table.

Details of selected
label shown here

Each label has a Start Page, an optional Prefix (such as Appendix:) and a Start
Number. Labels remain in effect until the start page for another label is reached.

Numbering of labelled pages can be done in a number of ways as shown in the pop-
up list next to the Start Number edit box.

Continued...
 Page Operations 144

Continued from previous page

Once a label has been modified be sure to

press Add to store the changes back into
the PDF.
If the Start Number clashes with an
existing label, the new details will
overwrite the existing label. Otherwise a
new label with that Start Number will be
3 added to the list.

Creating new page labels

To create a new label, fill-in the details in the lower portion of the dialogue box
ensuring that the Start Page number isnt already used in the table above.
Press Add to store the new labels details in the PDF.
Document Operations
Adding items to a portfolio
Deleting items from a portfolio
Document font catalogue
Document properties
Document security
Extracting items from a portfolio
Flight check
Portfolio Creation
Security settings
Tracking changes

145
 Document Operations 146

Document properties Standard Pro

A summary of the settings, dates, author and other information about the current PDF
can be viewed by choosing Document > Properties.

Full path name of the PDF

and its size on disc.

Document meta data.

This data is stored in a non-human

readable form inside the PDF and also
as plain text within an XML tag named
<Properties> nested in another named
<IceniSetup>.

Click on the Modified date to open the

PDFs Change Log.

Click on the Security hyperlink to open

the Document Security dialogue box.

Click on the User Restrictions: hyperlink to view/

modify the settings controlling how users may edit
this PDF.

Resource Page: indicates if the PDF has an

embedded Iceni resource page. This can be useful
for distributing PDF templates.

Notes
If the current document is part of a Portfolio the Document > Properties dialogue
will display the properties of the containing PDF. To see the properties of individual
documents within the Portfolio, click on the Item Properties icon in the Portfolio
panels toolbar (View > Portfolio).
When the selected document within a Portfolio is not a PDF, the Item Properties
dialogue is truncated to show just the basic properties of the file.
 Document Operations 147

Security settings Standard Pro

Using PDF security settings you can limit what other people can do with your PDF.
For example, you can stop other people editing or printing your PDF.

View current settings

To check the security settings for a PDF, choose Document > Security from the main
menu.
If the document has been secured, the security dialogue box will display with most
controls inactive. However the controls still show the current security settings such as
whether or not editing is allowed.

If enabled, click Unlock to

change security settings.
Inactive controls show the
current security settings for
the PDF.
1

If the PDF has an existing Master

password, you will have to enter it now.
If you do not know the password, you will
not be able to alter any of the security
settings.

2
 Document Operations 148

Document security Standard Pro

Using FlexiPDF you can add or modify security settings on PDFs. FlexiPDF supports
the following password-based security levels:
None
Acrobat 3 onwards (48 bit)
Acrobat 5 onwards (128-bit)
Acrobat 6 onwards (128-bit)
Acrobat 7 onwards (128-bit AES)
Acrobat 7 AES security is harder to defeat and offers finer control over the operations
allowed on your PDF. Older style (Acrobat 5 onwards) security is more compatible.

User Password:
If set, a password must be entered before the
PDF can be viewed or printed.

Master Password:
If set, a password must be supplied before
changes can be made to security settings.

The things other people are allowed to do with

this PDF.

For example, if you want people to be able to

add sticky notes without being able to change
the content of the PDF, choose Editing:
Comments & Form-filling

If unchecked, users will have to supply the Master

password to be able to unlock locked objects. This can
be useful when distributing templates.

Notes
If you forget the User password, you will not be able to open the PDF.
If you forget the Master password, you will not be able to alter the security settings in
future.
 Document Operations 149

Tracking changes Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can highlight text that has been modified during previous editing sessions.
It also records the date, author and page number of all changes made to PDFs (see
step 3 below).

Choose File > Preferences.

Ensure Show changed text in is enabled.
You can also choose the colour used for
highlighting.

Text that has been modified in this or

previous sessions will be highlighted
using the colour chosen in the preferences
dialogue box.

To see a complete history of all pages

modified using FlexiPDF, choose
Document > Change Log.

Continued...
 Document Operations 150

Continued from previous page

User Guy modified the PDF on Thursday, 25th October,

2007. No particular page was edited (Perhaps security
settings were modified.)

User warrenstone modified pages 2 to 25 around 11.14am

on Tuesday 24th August 2010.

Notes
FlexiPDF cannot highlight text that has been deleted. It will however, record that a
modification has been made to the page that used to contain the text.
Only changes made with FlexiPDF are recorded.
 Document Operations 151

Document font catalogue Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can list all of the fonts used in a PDF plus additional information about the
nature of each font.
Choose Document > Fonts to view the font catalogue.
Select a font then click Replace to replace all occurrences of the font in the PDF with
another. See Find & replace fonts on page 110.
Or press Remap to change the characters mappings of the font. See Remapping
fonts on page 95.

The number of
Font types can include any that are character shapes
supported by the PDF standard - defined by the font.
TrueType, Type1, Type3, OpenType
etc.
Yes indicates
During editing, FlexiPDF can only that the font has a
embed TrueType fonts taken from your built-in mapping to
computers system. Unicode

Fonts introduced during the current If the font is embedded in the PDF it will be
editing session will not appear until used and labelled embedded.
the PDF is saved.
If the font is not embedded in the PDF the font
Names prefixed with XXXXXX+ substitute chosen by FlexiPDF will be shown.
represent subset fonts (embedded This may be from FlexiPDFs built-in fonts or
with only a subset of their full from your computers system fonts.
character set).

Notes
When editing text, choose Text > Character Palette to view all of the glyphs
contained in a font.
 Document Operations 152

Flight check Standard Pro

FlexiPDF includes a basic flight-checking function. A check for overset text (see
Overset text on page 59) is always made prior to saving a PDF.
Two additional checks are available for users of FlexiPDF Professional or for those
editing a PDF with user restrictions (see User restrictions on page 225), these are
a check for images of less than 300dpi resolution
a check for non CMYK colour spaces
Choose File > Flightcheck (FlexiPDF Professional only) to open the Flight Check
Report dialogue box.

Uncheck to skip tests

Shows the numbers of

problems found for each kind
of test
(even if the test is disabled)

Describes each problem found giving the

kind of object affected and the page.

When saving a PDF, the flight check

dialogue always checks for overset text
(FlexiPDF Standard and Professional).

Press Save Anyway to ignore any problems

and save the PDF.
 Document Operations 153

Portfolio Creation Pro

A portfolio (in PDF terms) is a convenient way of bundling a collection of related

documents into a single container document. The documents in a portfolio need not
be PDFs but can be movies, audio, images, .doc or .txt files.
Portfolios are a fairly recent addition to the PDF specification and are generally only
supported by the latest PDF viewers.

Choose File > New > Portfolio.

The dialogue is similar to the Join Files
dialogue (see Joining multiple PDFs on
page 27).
You can add any number of individual
files to the portfolio. You can also add all
the files in a folder (and its sub-folders) by
pressing the Add Folder button.

Change the order of the files by selecting

one then pressing either Up or Down. You
can also change the document order after
the portfolio has been created.
To remove a file from the list, select it then
press Delete.
Click OK then select a filename for the new
portfolio document.

Notes
Though you can add non-PDF documents to a portfolio using FlexiPDF, not all
document types are supported. If there is a document type you feel should be
supported, please get in touch using Help > Suggestions.
You can change the order of items in an existing portfolio by picking up and dragging
the thumbnails within the Portfolio panel.
 Document Operations 154

Adding items to a portfolio Pro

Add files to existing portfolios by using Drag & Drop. Once added, you can change
the ordering of the documents by dragging them around within the Portfolio panel.

Ensure the Portfolios panel is visible (View

> Portfolio).

Drag & drop additional

documents onto the panel or press
the Add Document button in the
panels toolbar.

Drag documents to
the portfolio panel
to add to the current
portfolio.

Deleting items from a portfolio Pro

With the Portfolio panel visible (View > Portfolio), click on the item to be
deleted then either press the Delete key on the keyboard or the Delete Item
icon in the panels toolbar.

Extracting items from a portfolio Pro

With the Portfolio panel visible (View > Portfolio), click on the item to be
extracted then either press Extract Item icon in the panels toolbar. You can
then specify a filename for the copy of the item.
The original item will not be removed from the portfolio.
Commenting
Adding a signature to a page
Article threads
Bookmarks
Comments catalogue
Graphical comments and notes
Hyperlinks
Stamps
Sticky notes
Text highlighting
User-defined stamps

155
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 156

Comments catalogue Standard Pro

FlexiPDF offers a summary of all comments found in a PDF. This catalogue is

divided into three sections each containing the same information but sorted by:
Page
Comment type
Author.

Choose View > Comments to show the

comments catalogue.
Click on a comments entry in the
catalogue to see the page on which it
occurs.
Click on a comment and press Delete to
remove the comment from the catalogue
and the document.

When you edit the contents of the pop-up

note window, the comments catalogue
updates at the same time.

Drag and dock the comments panel to

any side of the main FlexiPDF window to
make it easier to read.
Drag the panel away from the main
window to convert it into a floating
window.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 157

Sticky notes Standard Pro

You can create new or edit existing sticky note annotations in PDFs. These are
small pop-up windows designed to contain short messages such as approval or
editorial comments.

Anatomy of a sticky note

Stick note icon.

This can be moved around independently of the sticky

note window.

Double-click the icon to toggle the main note window

open or closed.

Title bar - shows name of note

author, title, date and time of last
modification.

Close box

Message area
with scroll bar

Resize box

Notes
If you can not see the sticky-note window after double-clicking on the sticky note icon,
try scrolling the page or zooming out. It may be off the screen somewhere.
There are a number of alternative icons available - see Stick Note Properties for
details.
To change the authors name assigned to new notes, choose File > Preferences from
the main menu.
Sticky notes are not included when printing PDFs.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 158

Creating sticky notes

The sticky note tool is available on the
Commenting toolbar. To show the toolbar
choose View > Toolbars > Commenting.
1
Drag-out a box to denote the size of the
new sticky note.
Alternatively, single-click the left mouse
button to create a standard-sized sticky
note window.

If you have not already set up a user name

using File > Preferences, FlexiPDF will
now ask you to supply one.
This user name will be recorded in each
sticky note (or other comment) you make.

Deleting sticky notes

Sticky notes can be deleted in two ways:

Using the Hand Tool or

1 Sticky Note Tool, click on
a selected sticky the sticky note icon to select
note icon it.
Then press Backspace or Delete on the
keyboard.

2 Using the Hand Tool or Sticky Note Tool,

right-click on the sticky note icon and
choose Delete.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 159

Sticky note properties

Various properties of sticky notes can be modified such as the icon and colour can be
changed using the Sticky Note Properties dialogue box.

1 Select the Hand tool or

Sticky Note tool from the
toolbar.
Click the right mouse button over the
sticky note icon and choose Properties.

Use the dialogue box to change icon,

colour, title and author.
The modification time cannot be altered
manually.

Sticky Note Icons

Comment Key Paragraph

Help New Paragraph

Insert Note (default)

 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 160

Graphical comments and notes Standard Pro

As well as simple Sticky Notes, FlexiPDF offers a selection of graphical notations.

These pair a simple shape with a pop-up note and can be used to draw attention to
particular items on a page.

An example of a graphical
comment made using the Circle note
tool.
If the Commenting toolbar is not already
visible, choose:
View > Toolbars > Commenting.

Circle note tool selected

The default colour for a graphical

comment is red. This can be changed
by right-clicking the mouse over the
annotation shape (not the note window)
and choosing Properties.
A graphical comment has an optional Fill
colour, Line colour and a Line width (default
3 points).
You can also vary the Opacity of the
comment to allow the contents of the page
underneath to show through.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 161

Stamps Standard Pro

FlexiPDF offers a selection of predefined stamps - graphical labels - that

can be placed, resized and coupled with a pop-up note window. You can
also define your own stamps (see User-defined stamps on page 163).

An example of a Sign Here stamp and its

associated pop-up note window.

Stamp tool selected

Adding a stamp to a page

1. The Stamp tool is available on
the Commenting toolbar. To show
the toolbar choose
View > Toolbars > Commenting

2. Click and hold the Stamp tool icon to see

the menu of available stamps.
3. Select one of the stamp types then click in
your page to create a standard-size stamp.
4. Alternatively, drag-out a box to denote the
size of the new stamp.
5. Double-click the stamp to open its
associated note window.
6. Right-click on the stamp to choose the
Properties menu and alter the opacity of
the stamp.

Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 162

Continued from previous page

Stamp properties
Using the Hand tool, Object tool or any one
of the commenting tools, right-click over
the stamp and choose Properties.

You can change the Appearance of the

stamp as well as alter its Opacity - handy
if you want the pages contents underneath
the stamp to show through.
The Appearance drop-down menu will
only show built-in stamps. User defined
stamps do not appear.

2a

You can also change the appearance of

a stamp by selecting it with one of the
commenting tools then holding down right
mouse button.
The current stamp style will be show with
a check-mark next to it. Select a different
style and the stamp will be changed.

2b
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 163

User-defined stamps
You can tell FlexiPDF to load any number of user-defined stamps from a specific
folder either on your computer or on a network drive (in order to share stamps
between users).
A stamp is simply a single-page PDF. and can be created in any application that
produced PDFs including FlexiPDF itself.
The filename given to each stamp you create is used at the menu title in the User-
defined stamps, sub-menu.

Create a stamp using any software capable

of creating a PDF (or use the FlexiPDF
printer driver to convert it to a PDF).
Here, FlexiPDF itself is being used to
create a stamp.
Create a folder for storing of your stamp
PDF files. In the next step, FlexiPDF will
load all PDFs it finds in that folder and
1 treat them as user-defined stamps.

Choose File > Preferences > Editing and

specify the folder in which your stamps
are stored.
When you press OK, the folder with be
scanned for PDFs and any found will be
listed in the:
Tools > Stamps > User-defined sub-menu
as well as in the submenu attached to the
Stamp tool in the Commenting toolbar.
2 The folder will be re-scanned every time
the software is started or if the folder
location is changed.

Notes
Use Drawing tools to create the artwork for stamps, not the annotation/commenting
tools which look similar. You cant create a stamp using annotations or other stamps!
You can use the demo version of FlexiPDF to create stamps.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 164

Adding a signature to a page Standard Pro

If you have scanned a copy of your signature, it can be quickly stamped onto a
document - avoiding the need to print the document and sign it.
In fact you can define any number of different signatures for this purpose, his and
hers for example.

A signature definition can be constructed

from an image file or from the contents
of the current selection (using the Object
select tool).

To define a new signature, choose

Edit > Signature > Define.

We want to add a
signature here

Defining a signature from a file

Choose an image file to use as your
signature. This can be any JPEG, PNG,
Tiff or BMP image.
FlexiPDF will make a copy of this file and
use it in future.
Then enter a name for this signature.
This is the name that will appear in the
Signature menu.

The signature chosen in this

example is a high-resolution,
JPEG, grey scale scan

Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 165

Continued from previous page

Your signatures will be available for use in

the Edit > Signature > Insert submenu.
After initial placement, the signature
image will need to be resized.
Whilst holding down the Shift key, drag
one of the resize handles to scale the
image, retaining its original aspect ratio.
If you do not hold Shift whilst scaling, you
may stretch the signature out of shape.

The signature function places the image

so that its white background remains
transparent.
The finished size of the signature image is
recorded so that next time the signature is
used, you should not need to resize it.
Choose Edit > Signature > Delete to delete
signatures from the menu. This does not
delete any files from your computer.

Notes
Signatures placed in this way are not annotations in the same way as sticky notes etc.
They do not have associated pop-up note windows, do not appear in the comments
panel and are always included during printing. They form part of the page unlike
annotations which float in a layer above the page.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 166

Text highlighting Standard Pro

Use the text highlight button to add a coloured, semi-transparent highlight around
selected text. Like other annotations, the highlight has an associated pop-up note
window.

Using the Text tool select a span of

text to be highlighted.
Make the Commenting toolbar
visible by choosing
View > Toolbars > Commenting.

Press the Text Highlight button to

highlight the selected text or press
Ctrl+G.

The text will be highlighted. To open the

pop-up note window associated with the
highlighted text, double-click the text.

Notes
Text highlights are annotations that sit on-top of the PDF page like other annotations.
They do not track the text they apply to which means that if you edit the text on the
page after highlighting, the text may move with respect to the highlight.
A similar result can be achieved using the underline facility - this will track edited
text but does not have an associated pop-up note window.
See Underline on page 66
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 167

Hyperlinks Standard Pro

Use hyperlink annotations to create interactive boxes which, when activated by the
reader, will jump to another part of the same PDF, a different PDF or web address
(using an external HTML browser).

Click on the Link tool button in the

main toolbar.
Drag-out a box to denote the shape of the
1 hyperlink region.

After drawing the hyperlink box, the Link

Properties dialogue box is displayed.

The bottom half of the dialogue changes to

suit the type of link chosen in the top half.

Choose the link type from the selection

available. The Crop Box, Image Box and
Table Box link types are used during the
conversion of PDF into other formats (See
Exporting Content on page 184)
Changing the Action Type option will
cause the bottom section of the dialogue
3 box to change.

Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 168

Continued from previous page

Type: Go To View

Choose Go To View
Whilst the dialogue is still open, return
to the main PDF window and navigate
to the page and position you want
displayed when someone clicks on the new
hyperlink.
Back in the dialogue choose the Zoom: for
the destination view.
Press OK to create the hyperlink.

4a

Type: Open File

Choose Open File

Press Browse to choose the file to be

opened when the hyperlink is activated.
Next, choose how you want the new file
opened: in a new window, in the same
window or leave the choice up to the users
preference (dictated by their own PDF
4b viewers preferences)

Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 169

Continued from previous page

Type: World Wide Web Link

Choose World Wide Web Link

Specify the destination address.

Web addresses should begin with http://

4c

Image Box & Table Box annotations

These FlexiPDF-specific annotation types can be used to export images and tabular
information. There use in this way is detailed in Exporting Content on page 184.
They can also be used for automating the extraction of tagged data from laboratory
reports as part of a LIM (Laboratory Information Management) system.

Notes
Hyperlinks are annotations that float above the page in their own layer. They do not
track page contents which means that if you edit the text or move the objects on the
page the position of the hyperlink may then be incorrect and require adjustment.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 170

Bookmarks Standard Pro

Bookmarks allow readers to quickly navigate to specific places in a PDF and

are especially helpful in long PDFs. Using FlexiPDF you can automatically add
bookmarks to a PDF as well as modify and delete existing bookmarks.

On screen display
To see a PDFs bookmarks choose View > Bookmarks or press the F9 function key.

Bookmarks toolbar

Add new bookmark

Delete bookmark

View/Edit font filters*

Automatic bookmarks*

Click on a bookmark to view the

associated page in the PDF.

Click again to begin editing the title of the

bookmark.

Notes
Drag a bookmark on the title of another to nest the bookmark within the other.
Drag a bookmark on the icon of another to move without nesting within the other.
*Standard and Pro modes only
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 171

Automatic bookmarks Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can create bookmarks automatically. This is especially useful for long
PDFs that have no bookmarks.
You can optionally limit the process so that only text written using specific fonts is
eligible for inclusion in the resulting bookmark tree.

Choose View > Bookmarks to make the

bookmark catalogue visible.
Navigate to the page from where you wish
bookmark creation to begin.
For example, if you wanted to omit the
documents table of contents from the
bookmarks, go to the first page after it
before starting bookmark creation.

Press the magic wand icon on the

bookmark panels toolbar.
If the PDF already has bookmarks,
FlexiPDF will prompt you to proceed. If
you do, all existing bookmarks will be
removed before the new ones are added.
Press Yes to begin bookmark creation.
2

Depending upon the length and

3 complexity of your document, the process
may take a little while to complete.
You can cancel the process at any time
by pressing Stop. Though this may leave
the documents bookmark catalogue in an
incomplete state.

Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 172

Continued from previous page

In this example bookmark creation has

produced a fair result.
It can be improved now by deleting
unwanted items.
The stage directions such as [Enter
a Gentleman] are not wanted and too
numerous to delete by hand.
This can be avoided by instructing
FlexiPDF to ignore the fonts in which they
are written. See Bookmark font filters
on page 173 for details.

Unwanted items. Use the

Font filter mechanism to
avoid adding these stage
directions.

4
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 173

Bookmark font filters Pro

To avoid adding unwanted items to the bookmark tree during automatic bookmark
creation, you can instruct FlexiPDF to consider only text written in specific fonts.

Using the Text tool, select some text

of the kind you wish to include in
the bookmark tree.
In this case ACT III is the kind of
bookmark we want.
Press the Font filters button on the
bookmark panels toolbar.

The Bookmark Font Filters dialogue shows

a list of all the fonts that FlexiPDF will
consider during automatic bookmark
creation.
Initially the list contains only one entry:
All fonts

Any font not mentioned in the list will

be ignored during automatic bookmark
creation.

2 Press Add to filters to add the selected

texts font to the list.

Continue selecting and adding fonts to the

list of filters until you have all those you
wish for your automatic bookmarks.
To delete a font from the list, select it and
press Delete.

3
Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 174

Continued from previous page

This time the bookmarks have been

created without any of the stage directions
and look much more useful.

Notes
The list of font filters is not stored by FlexiPDF and will need to be re-created if you
close the document.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 175

Creating bookmarks Standard Pro

A bookmark records the page number, location and zoom setting used to view the
page at the time the bookmark was created.

Choose View > Bookmarks to ensure that

1 the bookmark catalogue is visible.
Navigate through your PDF to the page
you want to bookmark, zooming and
scrolling to the exact position you want to
record.
1
Press the New bookmark button on
the bookmark panels toolbar to
create a new bookmark.

The new bookmark will be created and

named New Bookmark.
See Renaming bookmarks on page
176 for details of how to rename the new
2 bookmark.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 176

Renaming bookmarks
Click on an existing bookmark to select it.

After a short delay, click again to start

renaming. The name of the bookmark will
become selected, ready for editing.

Deleting bookmarks
Click to select the bookmark item to be
deleted.
Press the Delete or Backspace key to
delete.

Note
If you delete a bookmark item that has sub-items (as shown above), the sub-items will
also be deleted.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 177

Moving bookmarks
You can move bookmarks to different parts of the bookmark tree.

Click to select the bookmark to be moved.

Drag the bookmark and drop it onto

the icon of the bookmark you want it to
appear after.
2

The bookmark will appear after the

bookmark you dropped it onto and at the
same nesting level.
3

Moving to the top

Move the bookmark you intend to be top
so that it is second in the list (as shown
above).
1
Then select the first item in the list.

Drag the first item and drop it onto the

icon of the second item (the one you want
to be top).
2

The two bookmarks will switch places.

3
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 178

Nesting bookmarks Standard Pro

Click on the bookmark you wish to nest.

Drag the bookmark onto the title of the

bookmark in which it will be nested.

2
The bookmark is nested within the one on
which it was dropped.

De-nesting Bookmarks
Click on a nested bookmark you wish to
move to a lower nesting level.

Drag the bookmark and drop it on the icon

of any bookmark with the nesting level
you want.

The bookmarks nesting will be changed

so it matches the one on which it was
dropped.

3
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 179

Article threads Pro

Articles are invisible, linked boxes

used to aid the reader in following
the flow of a story through a PDF.
When a viewing application such
as Adobe Reader detects an article
thread, it is able to present the text
boxes in turn for easier reading of the
complete article.
Some applications can use articles
to reflow the PDF or convert and
export stories into other formats such
as HTML (see Exporting article
threads on page 194).
There is no limit on the number of article threads a document can have.

Adding article threads

Open the page containing the start
of the story you wish to annotate
and select the Article tool from the
toolbar.
Carefully drag out a box around the first
column of text in the article. Continue
dragging out boxes around subsequent
columns, changing pages as needed to
follow the storys flow.
An article box can be moved, resized or
deleted after drawing as long as the Article
tool remains selected.

Continued...
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 180

Continued from previous page

When the last box has been drawn, press

the Escape key to finish the article.
Now select one of the new article boxes
and choose Edit > Article Thread >
Properties to display the Article Properties
dialogue box.
You can also display this dialogue by
double-clicking on an article box.

The information you supply here is used

by some PDF viewers to present an article
catalogue to users so they may choose an
article to read.
FlexiPDF makes use of Title during export
of Article threads into other formats
such as HTML (see Exporting article
threads on page 194)
For details of the Duplicate facility, see
Duplicating article boxes on page 182.
3

If there is enough room, FlexiPDF

displays the articles title in each box plus
then sequence number of the article.
If there isnt enough room for both, just
the sequence number is shown.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 181

Extending existing articles

You can add or insert a new article box in an existing thread.

Open the page containing the

article box you want to link to
and select the Article tool from the
toolbar.
In this example we are going insert a new
link between link 2 and 3 of the Cycle
Parking article thread.
Click on box 2 to selected it then click
again on the plus icon in the bottom right
hand corner of the box.

To link a new article box to an

existing box, first click on the plus
icon in the existing box.

Drag out a new article box.

When you finish dragging, the new box
will be numbered 3 and the box that
was formally numbered 3 will now be
numbered 4.
The new box has been inserted between 2
and 3.

Boxes after the new one have been

renumbered.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 182

Duplicating article boxes

FlexiPDF can duplicate an article box across a range of pages. This is useful when
you need to form a long article spanning multiple, similar pages such as a book.

Using the Article tool, drag-out a

new article box to fit the size of
the content on this page and all
following pages in the range you intend to
cover.
If you want this new box to be linked to an
existing thread, first click on the link icon
in the bottom right hand
corner of the preceding
article box before
drawing this new one.

Choose Edit > Article Thread > Properties

to display the Article Properties dialogue
box.
You can also display this dialogue by
double-clicking on an article box.
Click on Duplicate and enter the end page
for the new article boxes to be created.
On pressing OK FlexiPDF will clone this
article box on every page from the current
page up to and including the end page
2 specified, linking all the cloned boxes
together.
 Articles, Comments & Hyperlinks 183

Deleting articles
You can delete an article box, a range of boxes or an entire article thread. This does
not affect the content of the PDF (the text in the stories themselves is unaffected).

Using the Article tool select the

article box to be deleted.
Choose:
Edit > Article Thread > Delete or press the
Delete key.

We have selected the first

article box (bead) in this article
thread.

The delete dialogue box gives you the

option of deleting the entire article thread,
the currently selected article bead (in this
case bead 1), all beads in a range of IDs or
all beads across a range of pages.

For example, to delete beads 2 and 3 only,

you could choose Beads with IDs then
enter 2 to 3 in the edit boxes and press
OK.

3
Exporting Content
Cropping for export
Exporting article threads
Exporting images & illustrations
Exporting pages
Exporting tabular information
Exporting to LIMS
General export settings
HTML export settings
Image export settings
Text export settings

184
 Exporting PDF Contents 185

Exporting pages Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can convert an entire PDF or range of pages to other formats such as
HTML and ePub. The conversion reformats the text and images, areas marked for
rendering and tabular regions. You can export by page range or by article thread (see
Exporting article threads on page 194), individual images or tables.

Open the document you intend to export.

Choose File > Export > Pages As to reveal
the Export Pages dialogue box.

Specify the range of pages you wish to

export.
To change the format of the export or to
choose whether to export text only, images
only or both press the Format button.
The various options available within the
format dialogue are described in General
export settings on page 195
2

This is a summary of the

export options currently in
effect.

Notes
FlexiPDF analyses the pages to be exported and ranks fonts by size to work out what
should correspond to the various levels of heading (H1,H2 etc) available in the output
format. For the export formats that rely on this ranking, the results can differ if you
export a subset of pages to when you export the entire document.
Use the Crop tool prior to export to exclude parts of the page (for example to stop
headers & footers being exported).
 Exporting PDF Contents 186

Exporting images & illustrations Standard Pro

FlexiPDF can export images stored in a PDF into various popular image formats.

Exporting photographs
Select the image using the Object tool and choose Object > Image > Extract to
file.

You will then be able to save the image at its full resolution as JPEG, PNG, Tiff or
BMP.

Exporting graphics
When it comes to exporting graphics made from line-drawings, FlexiPDF needs to
be told which parts of the page form the illustration.
That is because there is no universal means of determining which parts of a page
are an illustration and which parts are just normal page contents. For example, is
the rectangle in the header on this page an illustration to be exported or just page
furniture?

How do you tell graphics from photographs?

If the quality of the picture appears to degrade or become more blocky and pixelated
as you zoom in to it, then it is a bitmap and does not need marking - FlexiPDF can
detect these without any assistance.
If however, the quality remains high, no matter how far you zoom, it is probably a
line-art, composed of vector drawing commands. You will need to mark the area in
order to export it at its best.
Another approach is to switch to outline mode (View > Outlines). In this mode,
images are not displayed.

Continued...
 Exporting PDF Contents 187

Continued from previous page

Marking up an image
Choose the Hyperlink tool from the
main toolbar.
Carefully drag out a box around the area
to be exported.
Everything included within the rectangle
you make will be rendered by FlexiPDF
and included in the export.

In this example an illustration

including text and a light green
background is to be exported.

After marking out the image, the Link

Properties dialogue box will appear.

Change the Type pop-up to Image Box.

Enter a title for the table in the Label box.
This is used during export in HTML
based formats.
You can now choose to repeat this markup
across a range of pages. This is useful if
your document contains a similar image,
repeated across several pages.
Press OK.

Continued...
 Exporting PDF Contents 188

Continued from previous page

The area is displayed by FlexiPDF

together with its label.
In this example, the illustration is on a
light green background - part of original
page design.
To avoid exporting the background as
well, use the Object tool to select
the background rectangle and then
3 choose Object > Hide.
Not only is it hidden from view in the
main viewing window, it will be hidden
when FlexiPDF renders the marked area
for export.
The rectangle can be revealed again by
choosing Object > Show All.

Continued...
 Exporting PDF Contents 189

Continued from previous page

Exporting individual images

Once a picture has been marked up (see previous page), it can be exported
immediately and in isolation - without exporting the rest of the page or document.

Select the Hand tool from the main

toolbar.
Click on the marked image to
display the Render Image Box dialogue
box.
The red image rectangle is only visible
1 while the Hyperlink tool is selected.

From the Resolution: pop-up menu, choose

the resolution to be used for rendering the
area. Higher resolutions result in better
image quality, longer rendering time and
larger image files.
As a guide, 300 dpi is usually sufficient for
most types of colour printing.
2

From the Format: pop-up, choose the

file format for the image. JPEG tends to
produce the smallest file sizes. PNG and
TIFF retain the highest quality.
The file format affects the choice of colour
depth. The JPEG file format cannot be
used for purely black and white (bi-level)
3 images, so these options will be greyed out
should you choose JPEG.

Continued...
 Exporting PDF Contents 190

Continued from previous page

Finally, choose the Colour Depth to be used

for rendering.
For most purposes RGB will be the best
option (full colour).
An example of each of the image formats
is shown below.
4

RGB (full colour), Grey scale

largest file size

Dithered (bi- Bitmap (bi-level),

level), small file smallest file size
size
 Exporting PDF Contents 191

Exporting tabular information Standard Pro

To obtain the best results when exporting tabular information, FlexiPDF needs to
be told which areas to treat as tables. Without this information, table are treated as
normal paragraphs and columns resulting in poor output.

Marking up a table
Navigate to the table to be marked up.
Select the Hyperlink tool from the
main toolbar.
Carefully drag-out a box around the
table. Exclude any non-tabular data that
could confuse the analysis process.

After marking out the table, the Link

Properties dialogue box will appear.

Change the Type pop-up to Table Box.

Enter a title for the table in the Label box.
This is used during export in HTML
based formats.
You can now choose to repeat this markup
across a range of pages. This is useful if
your document contains a similar table,
repeated across several pages.
FlexiPDF will look at the appearance of
the tabular area, including any borders
2 used to delineate rows and columns. In
some cases, it may be best to ignore these
lines and analyse only the non-graphical
content in order to discern the structure
of the table. In this case, check Ignore
borders.

Press OK.

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 Exporting PDF Contents 192

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FlexiPDF will then display the table link

box together with its label (if there is
room).
When you next export the document, this
markup-up area will be treated as a table
which should improve the output.
The blue table boxes are only visible
3 in FlexiPDF when the Hyperlink tool is
selected.

Exporting individual tables

Once a table has been marked up (see previous page), it can be exported immediately
and in isolation - without exporting the rest of the page or document. This instant
approach is the only way to export to SYLK format.

1. Select the Hand tool from the

main toolbar.
2. Click on the marked-up table.
3. Choose a name for the file into which
the table will be exported.
4. Choose the format for the export.
SYLK (an popular format for encoding
1 spreadsheet information) is only available
when exporting in this instant way.

Shown is the table marked-up in the

previous page, exported as HTML 4.
The HTML generated by FlexiPDF is
deliberately kept simply so that it can
easily be edited or included in other
documents.

2
 Exporting PDF Contents 193

Cropping for export Standard Pro

To exclude parts of a page from exporting then you can use the crop tool to
temporarily crop a range of pages in your document. Anything outside of the crop
box will be ignored during the export.

Use the Crop tool to drag out a box.

In this example, the page header
and footer remain outside of the
box to exclude them from the export
process.
Once the export has been done, the crop
can be removed by choosing:
Document > Pages > Remove Crop.

Notes
The Crop Box hyperlink that can be created using the Hyperlink tool is for use with
the Argus extraction engine. It is used to specify the automatic crop box applied to
documents as they are processed.
 Exporting PDF Contents 194

Exporting article threads Pro

FlexiPDF can use article threads as a guide to the order in which text is exported
from a document. For example, a story in a newspaper typically consists of many
columns of text and may even span multiple pages. By marking each of these as parts
of a single article in the correct order, FlexiPDF can extract the text in reading order.
For details of how to add articles to a PDF see Adding article threads on page 179.
when exporting articles from a PDF, FlexiPDF will also attempt to join-up any
paragraphs broken across article boundaries. When exporting by page, this joining
does not occur.
If you have a document which does not output in the correct reading order, the
application of article threads to the problem areas should improve export of both
articles and pages.

Open the document you wish to export

then choose File > Export > Articles As.
FlexiPDF will warn you if there are no
article threads in the document. In this
case, you will need to add some before you
try to export again. See Adding article
threads on page 179 for details.
1
Press Format to change the format used for
This is a summary of the
the export (HTML, ePub, etc).
export options currently in
effect.

If the Create file for every page/article

option in the Text tab of the Export Format
dialogue is selected (see Create file
for every page / article on page 199),
FlexiPDF will write each complete article
to a different file
Furthermore, when using HTML output
with article mode, FlexiPDF will produce
a table of contents linking to each article
output.

2
The Export Format dialogue box
 Exporting PDF Contents 195

General export settings Standard Pro

Use this panel to select the main text and

image output options to be used when
exporting a PDF. It acts as a short cut for
changing the major features of output,
keeping the more specific settings hidden
in other tabs.

Text Output
Check this item to export the text content
of your PDF. Either Text Output or Image
Output (or both) must always be enabled.

Text Format Pop-up

FlexiPDF supports a varied range of text
output formats including a set of XML
based formats, plain text and RTF for use
with Microsoft Word and other applications.
FlexiPDF can also export table data in SYLK format but only when clicking on a
table that has been marked-up with a Table Box annotation (See Exporting individual
tables on page 192).
Each of the available text formats is described below.

Plain Text
ASCII text, readable with any text editor or word processor. When layout is
retained using this format, spaces are inserted to ensure words and paragraphs are
placed into the right location.

RTF
Microsofts Rich Text Format, readable by virtually every word processor. An ideal
input format for Microsoft Office. FlexiPDF can embed all document images in a
single RTF file.
When exporting to RTF with Retain Layout, you may encounter difficulties if your
original documents page size is larger then 55cm (width or height). Some versions
of Microsoft Word cannot deal with such large page sizes.

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 Exporting PDF Contents 196

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Simple HTML
HTML using only a few simple tags. This is readable by all web browsers, but
some formatting may not be preserved. Images are linked from the document
rather than shown in-line.
A list of document bookmarks will be output at the top of the first page. If Create
file for every page/article is active a cover page, a bookmarks page and individual
contents pages will be produced, each hyper linked together.
When Try to preserve layout is active, this format inserts spaces making use of the
<PRE> tag in HTML to force the browser to honour every space character.

HTML 3.2
More complex HTML allowing for a wider range of styling. In-line images are
used. Meta-tags are added to the document using the creator, author and title
information stored in the PDF. Different character sizes are rendered using the tags
<H1>, <H2> etc.

If Create file for every page/article is active, a bookmarks page (if bookmark output
is enabled) and several data pages will be output. When frames are enabled the
index page uses frames to show the bookmarks on the left while viewing each page
on the right.
When Try to preserve layout is active, this format uses a complex HTML table for
each page. Font sizes in layout mode are selected using the FONT SIZE+/- technique
rather than <H1>, <H2> etc. since this gives better results.

HTML 4
As HTML 3, but CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) tags are used to render fonts and
sizes. This should be compatible with most modern web browsers.
If Create file for every page/article is active, a separate file is output containing all
of the CSS style elements used by the rest of the output pages. Edit this style sheet
file to quickly alter the look of the rest of the document.
When Try to preserve layout is active, this format uses a complex HTML table in
the same way as HTML 3.2. However, fonts and sizes still use CSS1 mark-up for
better results.

HTML 4 CSS
Using HTML with Cascading Style Sheets (v2) provides the most accurate
depiction of PDF content for the web. When preserving layout all fonts and
positioning are closely replicated.
When Try to preserve layout is active, a separate CSS file is produced which
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 Exporting PDF Contents 197

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describes the styles of all fonts used. Edit this CSS style sheet if any adjustments
need to be made to the look of the converted document.

ePub
Exports a single .epub file with no digital rights management, with or without
images using basic formatting.

ePub CSS
Similar to ePub except that the formatting is specified in a separate .css file held
inside the ePub package.

Right-to-left reading order

When enabled, FlexiPDF assumes the contents of the PDF are to be read right-to-left
(as is the case in Hebrew). It attempts to replicate this reading order in the output
produced.

Image Output
Check this item to export the image content of your PDF including those marked with
Image Box annotations. Either Text Output or Image Output (or both) must always be
enabled.

Image Format
FlexiPDF supports a range of image formats: JPEG, TIFF, BMP and PNG. Each of
these formats has different properties and is suitable for a different purpose.
TIFF supports CMYK which may give improved colour fidelity when converting
magazine and newspaper pictures.
TIFF (multi-page) will place all images within the same file. You will need a TIFF
viewer capable of handling multi-image files in order to view these correctly.

Convert each page into an image

Check this option to render the contents of each page. When checked, text output is
disabled since the entire contents of each page will be contained in the image file(s)
produced.

Place images in sub-folders

This option causes images files to be stored in a sub folder named images. This also
affects the path used in the IMG tag for HTML output.
 Exporting PDF Contents 198

Text export settings

Use the settings on this panel to control
the way text is output in all formats.
Additional settings which affect only
HTML output are grouped separately in
the HTML settings panel.
The options in the this tab are placed
into two sub-groups named Text Flow and
Text Appearance. This is simply to make
the panel a little easier to read.

Identify image captions

Selecting this option will cause FlexiPDF
to identify image captions and output
them along with images, rather than in
the main body of text. If image output is selected and the image format supports it
(TIFF, JPEG, PNG), captions will also be embedded within the image data.

Try to preserve layout

In all text formats except ePub, this option causes FlexiPDF to position words as
closely as possible to the original page layout. The way in which the positioning is
achieved depends upon the output format used.
Plain text with the layout retained should be viewed without line wrapping in a
mono-spaced font (such as Courier). Most output text documents will be very wide.
Simple HTML will be formatted as with plain text using letter spacing to position
page elements.
HTML 3 and 4 use tables to position page elements. HTML 4 CSS uses the absolute
positioning functionality available with CCS2. This may not be compatible with
some older browsers.
With all output formats there may be some deviation from the original document
layout requiring a degree of manual adjustment.

Render text in vector artwork

When enabled, text will be included in rendered artwork but not in the normal text
output stream. When not selected, the converse is true. That is, text will not appear in
rendered artwork but will appear in the text output stream.
If you find that some text you expected to see in your output is missing, check to see
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if this options is enabled.

Recognize Speech Marks

When Preserve Line Break is off, FlexiPDF attempts to reflow text into paragraphs.
The process is fairly reliable but may occasionally make mistakes.
However, when it comes to reported speech of the kind that may be found in a
conversation in a novel, it is vital that the correct line-breaks are retained; in speech,
the line-break is the readers main indication of a change in speaker.
When this option is on, FlexiPDF pays particular attention to quotation marks,
especially those at the beginning of a line or paragraph. The result is that it is much
more successful in retaining these important line breaks.
When processing documents unlikely to contain any reported speech, it is best to
disable this option.

Preserve line breaks

Selecting this option will ensure that FlexiPDF honours all line breaks in the original
document. Furthermore, it will stop FlexiPDF from removing hyphenation.
Enabling this option can make editing the output more difficult since lines of text will
not re-flow after insertions or deletions. However, it may improve the appearance if
layout is important.

De-hyphenate Words
When enabled, FlexiPDF will rejoin words split by a hyphen at the end of a line.
Words with hard hyphens such as 442-squadron are not altered.
To help in making the decision to leave or remove hyphens, FlexiPDF consults the
language dictionary currently selected for spell checking (see Spelling preferences
on page 245). However, should a particular word be unknown in the dictionary or be
in a different language, it is possible the software may take a wrong decision.
When disabled, FlexiPDF does not remove any hyphens and words will remain split
as they are in the original document.
When Try to preserve layout or Preserve Line Breaks is enabled, word de-hyphenation
is automatically disabled.

Create file for every page / article

Cause FlexiPDF to output each page to a separate file. When outputting to HTML

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 Exporting PDF Contents 200

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output files will be hyperlinked together. It is not applicable to ePub output which
always produces a single file.
When outputting article threads, FlexiPDF will place each article in a separate file.

Hyperlinks
If FlexiPDF detects any embedded hypertext links within a PDF, it will try to retain
these in the output. This is not possible for plain-text output.

Bookmarks
When enabled, FlexiPDF will retain a documents bookmarks as hypertext
destinations in all but plain text output modes.

When disabled, no bookmarks will be output.

Page Breaks
When enabled, FlexiPDF will output the given text at the end of each page produced.
For HTML for example, <HR> may be used as a simple page break.
 Exporting PDF Contents 201

HTML export settings

This tab contains options for tailoring the
way FlexiPDF produces HTML output.

Background
This group of options allows a
background colour or image to be
specified for each page output in HTML.
Whatever is entered in the Colour: box is
included in the <COLOR> attribute of the
<BODY> tag of each page output. Colour
could be the word yellow or a colour
definition such as #FFFFFF.
The Image: box is used to enter a
filename of a image. This name is placed
into the BACKGROUND attribute of the <BODY> tag for each page. Be careful about the
name entered here since it will be included exactly as typed.
The image name need not refer to an actual image on your hard disc but may for
example, refer to an image which is or will be stored on the computer used to host the
web pages once they are complete.

Header and footer files

The header and footer file boxes are used to specify files on disc whose contents will
be merged into each page of HTML output by FlexiPDF. For example you may wish
to add your companys own corporate graphics to the top and bottom of each page
output.
The contents of the header file will be output just after the <BODY> tag of a page
but before any extracted text or images. Similarly, the contents of the footer file are
output just before the closing </BODY> tag of each page.
You cannot type into the text boxes directly so instead use the Browse buttons to
select existing files.

Page-to-page links
When FlexiPDF is processing in File-Per-Page mode as set in the Text Settings tab,
each page of a document is stored in a new file and navigation links to the previous,
first and next pages are placed on each page for convenience.
The controls in this group allow the appearance of these navigation links to be
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 Exporting PDF Contents 202

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changed. Whatever is entered into either of the Previous, First or Next boxes will be
output instead of the words Previous, First and Next.
This facility may be useful when converting documents for a non-English speaking
audience or if navigation images are required rather than text.

Image Borders
When enabled, images will have a border around them generated using the border
attribute of the HTML <IMG> tag

Frames
This setting only takes effect when bookmark output is enabled (see Bookmarks on
page 200).
When enabled, FlexiPDF creates a two-frame frameset definition which places the
bookmarks frame on the left hand side of the screen and the extracted content on the
right hand side. Clicking on a bookmark, changes the page in the right hand side.
When disabled, no frameset is created and bookmark destinations do not reference a
target frame.
 Exporting PDF Contents 203

Image export settings

When image output is enabled in the
General format tab, FlexiPDF produces
copies of all images stored in the PDF.
The options in this tab are mainly
concerned with the scaling or size of the
images output.
FlexiPDF can deal with two types
of image in PDF: vector illustrations
consisting of lines, curves, filled areas
and bitmap images or photographs made
up of many colored pixels.
FlexiPDF cannot output vector formats
directly but will instead convert any
such illustrations into a bitmap format by
a process called rasterization.

Auto-identify vector artwork

Many PDF documents may contain vector artwork or line-art. However, due to the
nature of PDF, it is not always possible for a computer program to determine where
on a page such artwork occurs since each page is stored as a general mix of text,
images and line-art.
FlexiPDF is capable to an extent, of identifying such artwork on a page. Selecting
this option will cause FlexiPDF to automatically convert vector artwork in the
original into images in the output format selected.
If you are not sure whether a document contains vector artwork or bitmaps, zoom in
on the picture. If it becomes blocky or pixelated then it is a bitmap image. If it stays
sharp and detailed, it is probably a vector-based drawing.
If you encounter problems with illustrations not being correctly identified, use the
Hyperlink tool to mark them up with Image Box links. See Exporting individual
images on page 189 for details.
FlexiPDF can only output images in bitmap formats not vector graphics formats. If
images do not appear in your final output documents, try turning this option on or
placing an image box around the missing images.

Use original OPI name if available

If your PDF contains OPI placement information for the images within it, FlexiPDF
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will use the original filename for images it exports.

You can check if an image has associated OPI information by selected the image with
the object tool, then click the right mouse button and choose Image Properties.

Image Scaling
This set of options allows you to set the output scaling of the images that FlexiPDF
extracts from a PDF.
When disabled, images are output as they are found in the PDF. This may give very
large images since many PDF documents contain high-resolution versions of an
image which are then scaled by the PDF viewer to the correct size.

Fix image resolution at:

This option scales output images so that they are all at the same resolution in dpi
(dots per inch). Resolutions available are: 72, 100, 150, 300, 400, 600, 720, 800 and
1200 dpi.
This setting is particularly important when rendering vector artwork.

Advanced Scaling Pop-up

Three types of advanced scaling can be selected from the drop down menu. For each
kind of scaling, if either width or height is set to zero, then an images aspect ratio is
maintained.

Set image size

Enables exact image sizes to be specified in pixels. Images will be sub-sampled or
expanded accordingly.

Maximum size
Enables a maximum image size to be specified. If an image is smaller than the
width and height values given then the scaling is unchanged. When Max scaling
occurs, the aspect ratio is maintained. So, for example an image which is 800 by
400 when output at a Max of 200 by 200 will be rendered as 200 by 100 - the shape
of the image is maintained.

Scale
Will resize images according to a percentage value.

Colour depth to use when rendering

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This pop-up tell FlexiPDF how to render any marked-up regions during export. It
also controls how pages are rendered if the Convert each page into an image option is
enabled in the General tab. It has no affect on the export of non-rendered images such
as photos - these are, in most cases, output with the colour depth at which they are
stored in the PDF.
You can determine the colour depth of images stored in a PDF by clicking on an
image using the object select tool, then choosing Image Properties from then right-
mouse button menu.
 Exporting PDF Contents 206

Exporting to LIMS
FlexiPDF can be used together with Icenis command-line driven PDF converter -
Argus, as part of a Laboratory Information Management System to automatically
extract tagged data from machine-generated reports.
FlexiPDF is used to create a PDF template containing the tagged annotations.
This template is then automatically applied to incoming PDF reports by Argus.
As the reports are dropped into Argus hot-folder, it uses the template to extract data
and convert it to other formats such as HTML, XML or ePub.

Creating a LIMS template with FlexiPDF

Open a typical machine-generated PDF
report in FlexiPDF.
Using the Link tool, draw a box
around each item you would like to
extract.
An item can be a graph or illustration, an
entire table or a single word or line of text.

After drawing a box around the object, the

hyperlink dialogue will appear.
Change the Type to either Image Box or
Table Box. In this example, we are setting
up the export of a table of results.
The contents of the Label field will be
output together with the data when the
PDF is processed by Argus. Enter a
meaningful name or tag in the field.

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 Exporting PDF Contents 207

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The table has been marked-up and tagged

with the label Peak Results.
Notice that the blue annotation border
does not include items outside the table
(the title in this case).
Including non-tabular information within
3 a table box makes it more difficult for
FlexiPDF to discover the structure of the
table itself.
This page has been marked-up with 2
tables and an graph (render zone).
Once saved, the document can be used to
form an annotation plan for use by Argus.

Using the PDF template with Argus

Argus needs to scan the PDF, extract the specifications of marked-up regions and
store this as an annotation plan. To do this, execute:
argus -a lim.plan template.pdf
where lim.plan is the name of the plan file that will be generated and template.pdf is
the PDF that has had the annotations added to it using FlexiPDF.
The plan file produced in this example is:
[ANNOT PLAN]
0.Image Box =1 [530.30, 42.48, 283.51, 578.70] 0 Auto-generated
Chromatogram;
1.Table Box =1 [262.04, 105.92, 169.78, 289.33] 0 Peak Results;
2.Table Box =1 [651.66, 43.15, 551.55, 544.33] 0 Sample
Information;
[-- END --]

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 Exporting PDF Contents 208

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The new plan file should be included in the configuration file you intend to use for
exporting:
ICENI PREFS
OWNER:Argus
VERSION:500

#include charMaps/htmlSimple.cmap
#include spool.cfg
/* Load the lim annot plan */
#include lim.plan

[Argus Controls]
Built In Fonts Dir =./fonts;
CMAP Path =./cmaps;
...

An example configuration file (lim.cfg) is included in the Argus distribution. To use

this to process a single PDF report:
argus -t -c lim.cfg report330.pdf
where report330.pdf is the name of the PDF being processed and -t indicates that only
annotated items are to exported (other page contents are to be ignored).
A simple HTML-based output file will be generated in docs/report330/

Notice the use of the LABEL macro in the example configuration file lim.cfg:
[PIC]
Start =<TABLE><TR><TD>
<IMG SRC=[FILENAME]/image[PAGENUM]-[PIC _ NUM].png
width=[WIDTH] height=[HEIGHT] BORDER=1
ALT=LABEL:[LABEL]>
<CAPTION align=bottom>LABEL:[LABEL] [CAPTION]
</CAPTION>
</TABLE><HR>;

The facility is of most use when spooling, as in:

argus -c lim.cfg -t -s
which uses the [SPOOLER] settings in the #include spool.cfg to place Argus in spool
mode. In this mode, the process sleeps until a PDF arrives in the target folder. It is
then processed and either deleted or moved to a done folder.
Translation
Exporting content for translation
Font problems during import
Importing translated text
Managing font substitutions
Marking text blocks for translation
Translation Tips

209
 Translation 210

Exporting content for translation Pro

FlexiPDF can export the text of a document, automatically tagging each paragraph
with its original location. You can export a range of pages, individual stories or
specific marked text boxes (see Marking text blocks for translation on page 213).
This text can then be translated using any other software (e.g. Trados, Across TM,
Dj Vu, Google) and re-imported back into the document by FlexiPDF. As FlexiPDF
imports the translated text, it uses tags embedded in the PDF during export to
determine both the correct location and basic text styles of text being imported.
If translated text is too long to fit into the original text boxes, FlexiPDF can subtly
adjust its spacing to make it fit.
It is very important to ensure the current spell-check language matches that of the
text being exported. If it does not, soft-hyphens will not be correctly removed during
export.

Open the PDF you want to translate.

Choose:
Document > Translate > CAT Export.

Choose the extent of the text you want to

include in the export. You may prefer to
work on a few pages or a single story at a
time rather than the entire document.
Check Limit to marked content only to
export only those text boxes which you
have already marked for export. See
Marking text blocks for translation on
page 213.
- Current Story is only available if you
were editing text when you chose to begin
the export. If selected, the active text box
1 and any linked to it will be exported as a
single story.
Use the Text Order tool to link text
blocks together to form stories,
prior to beginning the export
process.

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 Translation 211

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Choose the format of the exported text.

Simple XML is recommended since can
encapsulate more text style information
and can be used within most popular CAT
2 tool.

Once exported, FlexiPDF will remind you

to save the document. This is crucial since
the export process will have added tags
not only to the text output but to the PDF
itself.
You cannot import the translated text
back into the PDF unless this tagging
3 information exists.
Saving a copy of the tagged PDF now
ensures that you will be able to import the
translated text back into it in future.

After exporting, the tagged paragraphs are

highlighted. This will only be visible in
FlexiPDF and does not affect the PDF.
You can hide this highlighting by
choosing View > Text > Field Shading.

Exported paragraphs are highlighted

4
Tool-tips show the original contents of a
tagged paragraph even after translation.
This is visible in FlexiPDF only, and does
not affect the PDF.

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 Translation 212

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<DOC id=translation test.pdf> Example Simple XML output.

<STORY>
<P id=2> <STORY> indicates the start of a story (text
<span style=font-family:GaramondLight><span style=color:#000000>
block).
Adstract automatically elds, reformats and exports text and graphics
from display ads including recruitment, real-estate and motors ads.
</span></span> <P id=2> means paragraph 2.
</P>
<P id=3> <span> tags are used to record font
<span style=font-family:GaramondLight> changes.

Tags must nest correctly with the

appropriate closing tags (such as </span>).
If you think your translation software may
corrupt the syntax of the XML during
editing, then it is best to us the Plain text
export format.

<S> Example Plain text output.

<P5>
<F12>Designing Wood Schools <S> indicates the start of a story (text
<S> block). <P5> means paragraph 5. <F11>
<P6>
indicates
<F11>When it comes to designing an educational a font change
facility, to font
architects and11.
designers
must balance the reality of limited nancial resources with the desire to provide
students with an exceptional learning environment that is warm and enriching. at
The fonts used in an export are listed As a
the end
result, many are choosing to use wood as both of the text and
a structural file nish
and should not be
material.
edited.
There are no closing tags in this format
(no need for </P> for example). This
makes the format much more robust in
the face of syntax errors that may be
introduced during translation.

Notes
A few XML tag definition files can be found in the Translation Support folder in the
FlexiPDF Professional installation folder. These define the XML tags which should be
ignored during translation. In most cases they have been created by customers and can
be used with various popular CAT tools.
 Translation 213

Marking text blocks for translation

Rather than exporting whole pages or stories, you can limit the export to only those
text boxes that have been marked for export. This maybe useful in a catalogue for
example where product names can be left out of the export to ensure they do not get
modified during translation.
Marking-up for export has been designed to offer a very rapid workflow for the
translator who does not want all of a document to be translated.
All of the following operations require that marking mode is active.

Marking whole text boxes for export

Switch into marking mode, by
choosing Document > Translate >
Mark Text Boxes For Export.

On switching into this mode, the

boundaries of text boxes will become
visible and the Object tool will be selected,
though you are free to switch between the
other tools.
To avoid accidental changes to the
document during markup, you cannot
change the position or size of objects when
in this mode.

Click on a text block to mark it for export.

Click again to unmark it.

Drag-out a selection to mark a number of

boxes at once. Mark text boxes across any
number of pages.

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Partially marking text boxes

When you want to export only part of a text box, you can rapidly split the text box,
marking one part and leaving the remainder unmarked.
There are two ways to do this whilst in the markup-up mode:
Method 1: Splitting by rectangle
Use this method when you want to grab
and mark all the text in a rectangular area.
With the Object tool active, Ctrl+Shift drag
around the text to be marked.

When you release the mouse button,

FlexiPDF will rebuild the text boxes
covered by the drag and then mark the
resulting box for export.

Method 2: Splitting by text selection

Use this method when the content to be
marked cannot be isolated by a rectangle
but needs an exact character selection.
Using the Object tool, Ctrl+drag the text
you want to markup.

1 Continued...
 Translation 215

Continued from previous page

Only the selected text will be marked.

It will be removed from its original text
box and placed into a new box.
In this example, the non-marked text has
been shown in grey to better illustrate the
extent of the marked text.

When you are finally ready to export

for translation, be sure to check Limit to
marked content only in the CAT Export
dialogue box.

To unmark all text blocks throughout the document, choose:

Document > Translate > Unmark All Text Boxes.

Notes
If you split text boxes, do not make edits to the resulting unmarked text boxes. The
split may leave gaps were the marked text was located (as in (2) above). Reflowing will
shuffle-up the remaining text, eliminating these gaps.
The order in which you mark boxes, does not effect the export order.
It may be handy to make the translation toolbar visible - View > Toolbars > Translation.
Changing pages may be a little slower since FlexiPDF has to compute the boundaries
of text blocks as it displays each page (normally only done when you begin editing).
When saved, FlexiPDF stores the status of each text block ready for the next time the
PDF is loaded into FlexiPDF.
 Translation 216

Importing translated text Pro

To complete the translation of a PDF, you need to import the new, translated text back
into the document. FlexiPDF will place each translated paragraph into the correct
location in the document, reflowing, fitting and substituting fonts as required.

Open the PDF into which you will import

your new text. This should be one saved
immediately after your initial export.
FlexiPDF will have embedded tagging
information in that PDF which will now
be used to relocate the text you are about
to import.
Choose Document > Translate > CAT Import
to display the import dialogue.
1 Press Browse to choose the text or XML
file to be imported.

Make sure the current spell-check

language matches the text being imported.
If it does not, press Language to change the
setting.
2
When the spell-check language does
not match, words may not be correctly
hyphenated during reflow.

Select Automatically fit text where needed

to have FlexiPDF adjust the new text in
order to get it to fit in the available space.
This may slow down the import
3 considerably since the fitting process is
quite expensive.
Press Fitting to control the details of how
FlexiPDF fits the text. See Automatic text
fitting on page 85 for details.

Continued...
 Translation 217

Continued from previous page

Selecting Reset letter spacing will cause

FlexiPDF to set all word and letter spacing
to zero on imported text.
Otherwise imported text will use the
4 spacings of the original text.
It is normally recommended that this
option be selected.

The dialogue indicates the number of Font

substitutions rules in effect. The first time
you import this will be 0.
During the import, you may setup some
5 font substitution. If you import again,
the dialogue will then display a non-zero
count of the number of substitutions in
effect.
Press Fonts to load, examine and modify
these substitutions rules. See Managing
font substitutions on page 219 for more
details.

Press OK to begin the import.

The first part of the process checks to see
if the fonts currently used in the document
6 contain all the characters required by the
new text.
For example, when translating from
English to French, some of the embedded
fonts in the PDF may not include the
necessary accented characters common in
French.
This phase is described on the next page.
 Translation 218

Font problems during import

If the new text requires some characters that are missing from the fonts used for the
original text, the Font Problems dialogue box will appear.

The problem font (in this case

FrutigerBold) is shown together with a
list of required characters. These may
be missing because the font is a subset,
embedded in the PDF or it may be that
the font just does not cater for those
characters.
1 As each font problem is presented,
FlexiPDF will highlight an example usage
of the font in the main document.

You can choose to substitute another font

or ignore the problem.
In some case, especially with symbol or
decorative fonts, it is best to ignore the
problem by pressing Ignore.
If you do not wish to ignore it, choose an
2 alternative font from the Substitute Font
drop down list. This list includes all fonts
in the document plus those loaded from
your computer.

Should the substitute font not contain all

the required characters, FlexiPDF will
prompt you to choose again.
It is usually best to choose a font from
3 your computers font library rather than
one from the PDF. These are the ones
listed after the dividing line in the drop-
down list.
Each time you Ignore or Change a font,
you will be presented with the next font
problem.
Continued...
 Translation 219

Continued from previous page

Once all font issues have been resolved,

4 the second phase of the import starts.
FlexiPDF scans the new text for changes
with respect to the existing content of the
PDF. When a modified paragraph is found,
it is imported.

Managing font substitutions

FlexiPDF remembers the font substitutions made during CAT Import and uses them
for subsequent imports. You can view, edit, export and load the complete set of
substitutions by choosing Document > Translate > Font Substitutions or by pressing
the Fonts button in the Import Translation dialogue box.

The dialogue displays all the current font

substitutions.
These will apply to any document loaded
and not just the last one on which a CAT
Import was performed.

To change an existing substitution, select

it in the list.
The details of the selected entry are then
displayed in the two pop-up menus below
the list.
Choose a different Original Font or
Replacement Font and then press Change
to store the new settings back in the list
above.

Continued...
 Translation 220

Continued from previous page

The Load and Save enable you to save a

permanent copy of the font substitutions
to disc for use later.
The plain text format file can be edited by
hand and passed onto others that may need
the same set of substitutions.
Is is useful to save the current set after
working on a document so that it can be
loaded prior to the next time you need
work with the CAT Import function.

% Font Replacements for PDF W:\PDF documents\Wood _ Schools-fielded.pdf

% Generated by FlexiPDF
% This file may be edited by hand and re-used in FlexiPDF
% --------------------------------------------------------

FrutigerBlackItalic -> CenturyGothicBoldItalic

FrutigerBold -> CenturyGothicBold
FrutigerBoldCn -> ArialNarrowBold
FrutigerBoldItalic -> CenturyGothicBoldItalic
FrutigerLight -> CenturyGothic
FrutigerLightCn -> ArialNarrow
FrutigerLightItalic -> CenturyGothicItalic
FrutigerRoman -> CenturyGothic
FrutigerUltraBlack -> CenturyGothicBold

Example substitutions text file generated by FlexiPDF

 Translation 221

Translation Tips
Where text flows across columns
1 or pages, connect the text blocks
together using the Linked text tool.
Once connected, remove any unwanted
paragraph breaks at the end of each block
(which will have been added before the
blocks were connected.)
See Editing text across columns &
pages on page 58.

Reflowing the text during import is slower

2 when the text is fully justified.
To avoid this when dealing with long
stories (such as a chapter of a novel)
change the text justification to Left
justified prior to import.
The import will be faster and the
justification can be changed back once it is
complete.

For similar reasons, using Auto fit on

3 long stories can be slower. Do the auto-
fitting after the import has been done by
choosing Text > Align > Full whilst editing
text.

When translating a long document, deal

4 with a section/chapter at a time.
Since the export process requires a large
amount of computer effort and memory,
keeping exports to no more than 100
pages at a time will improve throughput
considerably.

Continued...
 Translation 222

Continued from previous page

1. Enable View > Text > Boundaries to make it easier to see the shape of text boxes.
2. Ensure spelling language is matches the language used in the PDF - this has a big
effect on hyphenation and thus reflow.
3. Some text boxes may need merging. e.g. FlexiPDF may split a column of text into
separate boxes for headline, body, headline, body etc.
In this case use the Object tool (blue arrow) to drag a box around these boxes, then
choose Text > Text Box > Merge Vertically to ensure they become one single box.
5. When you link text boxes you may have some unwanted paragraph breaks.
Prior to linking, every text box ends with a paragraph break. When you link them
together, FlexiPDF will look to see if those breaks are necessary or a consequence
of the text breaking across boxes and remove those it thinks are not required.
This is only an educated guess so you may find a lingering paragraph break where
none is needed. After reflow, this paragraph break may end up somewhere in the
middle of an adjacent text box. Remove them to restore the original flow.
6. When linking text boxes the text is not immediately reflowed and should look no
different. However, when you reload a document with linked boxes and begin to
edit, those boxes are reflowed prior to your first edit. It is at this point that you may
see reflow issues for the first time.
7. Unless you have already reshaped a text box, FlexiPDF will automatically extend
the final text box in a sequence to avoid losing text. If you reshape that box it will
remember that new shape and no longer alter it.
8. FlexiPDF sometimes doesnt correctly guess paragraph alignment. It may for
example assume text is left aligned when it should be fully-justified. Unless you
check by looking at the alignment buttons in the toolbar, this will only become
apparent after a reflow. Left justification typically uses more space than full-
justification which means such text may overflow.
To correct this, just click in the paragraph and press the correct alignment button
on the toolbar.
9. The text in a document may be generally squeezed a little to achieve a certain
layout. Although FlexiPDF attempts to calculate the actually global adjustment
used, it may not exactly match and the text may tend to overflow.
To remedy this, click on one of the text boxes in a linked chain using the Text tool
then choose Text > Align > Full and choose the Medium option.
Templates
Basic templates
Dynamic images
Dynamic line-art & graphics
Dynamic page size
Dynamic text using fields
Dynamic text using tokens
Embedded font & colour resources
Fields and tabstops
User restrictions

223
 Templates 224

Basic templates Pro

FlexiPDF Professional can be used to setup PDFs ready for

interactive editing with lesser versions of the com
ftmaker. om

software.
sales@so maker.c many
.soft
Email: www 911 303 796 mberg
- Ger
Web: +49 (0) 911 936 3860 7 Nure
(0) 7 - 9042
Fax: ne: +49 acher Str.
Telepho : Kron
Address

Individual objects in the PDF can be locked TO AD

DRESS

and restrictions added to control the way the "Your all-a

round PDF
editor"

document can be edited in future such as limiting Date:

RE:

Dear Sir/
Madam
,
RECIPIEN
T'S ADDR
ESS HERE

the colours that can be used.

FlexiPDF Professional can also create variable Sender:
SoftMaker

PDFs for use with Infix Server. These can include

Kronacher
Str.
90427 Nurem 7
Germany berg

variable elements for large-volume, automated [FIRSTNAME]

[FAMILYNAME]

creation of customised PDFs.

[JOBTITLE]

email: [EMAIL]
mobile:[MOBILE]
IDZat landline: 01603 628289 / x25

Open your PDF.

This example uses a basic envelope design
produced using FlexiPDF or any other
design application capable of generating a
PDF.

Using the Text tool, drag out a

central text box for the address.
Ensure it is big enough to
accommodate most addresses.
Enter some sample text to indicate where
the user should type.
Choose a font and size for the sample text
so that users of the template do not need to
2 bother.

Continued...
 Templates 225

Continued from previous page

Choose Document > User Restrictions to

display the User Restrictions dialogue box.
Use this dialogue to limit how users
interact with the template. For example,
limiting the fonts they can use when
editing.
Press OK then save the PDF as normal.

User restrictions Pro

Once applied, User Restrictions are effective in all versions of FlexiPDF but can only
be removed or altered using FlexiPDF Professional.
To view and change the restriction choose Document > User Restrictions or click on
the Restrictions hyperlink in the Document > Properties dialogue box.
Approval required after editing
Documents based upon templates will have an Approval Required watermark
added when saved. This can only be removed using FlexiPDF Professional.
Basic flight check on save
FlexiPDF checks for a minimum of 300dpi resolution on all images in the PDF
and for CMYK colour spaces. This is in addition to the standard check for overset
text.
Edit using existing fonts only / Edit using existing colours only
Limits the available fonts and/or colours that can be used to those already in use in
the PDF. This helps to ensure users do not deviate from the initial design goals or
corporate identity colour schemes.
When colours are restricted, users are presented with the Swatches dialogue when
they wish to change the colour of an object.
Disable text scaling
When scaling objects, text boxes are not be affected.

Continued...
 Templates 226

Continued from previous page

Lock left alignment of all objects

Limits the directions in which objects may be moved.
Text boxes may be resized to allow for more text for example, but their position
along their x-axis cannot be altered. This is to help maintain the essence of the
designs original layout.
Preserve aspect ratio during scaling
Ensures that no objects can be stretched out of proportion. Any scaling is applied
equally to both x & y axes.
 Templates 227

Embedded font & colour resources Pro

To ensure portability and ease of editing, templates should include embedded font
definitions for all the character shapes likely to be used.
For templates with a restricted colour palette (see User Restrictions earlier in this
section) it may be necessary to define optional colours not yet used in the template
but that may be used in future.
Both of these requirements can be met by including a resource page in your
template.

Bistream Vera Sans An example resource page containing two

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
fonts and four colours.
0123456789 !"$%^&*()[]
{};:'@#~`<>,./?-=_+\ The page can be prepared within
Bistream Vera Sans Bold FlexiPDF or using any other editor capable
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ of generating PDF.
0123456789 !"$%^&*()[]
{};:'@#~`<>,./?-=_+\ Choose:
Document > Resource Page > Add to embed
the resource page within the currently
open PDF.
The resource page will not appear as part
of the document in any PDF viewer and
will not be output if the PDF is printed.

Checking resource pages

The Document Properties dialogue box will show the existence of a resource page in a
PDF.
Choose Document > Resource Page > Extract to copy the embedded page to a new file
and view it in FlexiPDF.
 Templates 228

Dynamic text using tokens Pro

For Infix Server to accurately find the target text you wish to replace in your
templates, the text should form unique names or tokens.

For this business card, the artwork has

been produced with tokens specifying the
[FIRSTNAME]
location of text to be replaced.
[FAMILYNAME]
[JOBTITLE] The token texts font, alignment, margins
etc. will be retained when it is replaced by
Infix Server.
email: [EMAIL]
mobile:[MOBILE]
IDZat landline: 01603 628289 / x25

Dear [CNAME],
Here the tokens have been included within
the body text.
Thank you for purchasing the [PRODUCT] on
[PDATE]. When replaced, the body text will be
We would like to take this opportunity to reflowed to ensure correct layout.
remind of our aware-winning after-sales
care and invite you to sign-up for our free The [PRODUCT] token is using a different
newsletter covering all aspects of the font to the rest of the body text.
[PRODUCT] plus hints and tips for getting
the most out of it.

Notes
To ensure predictable reflow after token replacement in body text, prepare the PDF
using FlexiPDF, setting text-box sizes and paragraph alignments etc.
Reflow behaviour can be controlled by the name of the tokens themselves. This is
useful for templates that have not been prepared using FlexiPDF. See the Infix Server
user manual for more information.
 Templates 229

Dynamic text using fields Pro

The use of tokens such a [JOBTITLE] in a PDF template where layout or spacing is
critical is sometimes impractical. In these cases, a block of existing text can be given
a name without affecting the text itself. This name can then be used as a target for
replacements via Infix Server.

In this example the box containing A is

too small for a token such as [SECTION].
Using the Text tool, select the A.

Choose Text > Tag > Properties.

Enter the token name into the Name text
box.
This is the name that will be used in the
Infix Server configuration file.

You can, optionally, control the way Infix

Server will reflow the replaced text.
These two pop-ups behave the same way
as those in the Replace Format Dialogue
used during Find & Replace.

Continued...
 Templates 230

Continued from previous page

The Control option instructs Infix Server

to delete the field and its containing
paragraph should it become empty after
processing.

The content of the Description field will be

shown in a tool tip window whenever the
mouse hovers over a text field.

Choose View > Text > Field Shading to have

FlexiPDF highlight text fields.
The colour used for each field is decided
by FlexiPDF.
6
 Templates 231

Fields and tabstops

Tab stops inherit the field-id of the preceding character no matter what that character
is - visible glyph or control characters such as paragraph mark.
To change this behaviour you need to alter the tabstop in question.

Here the right-aligned tab before

Telephone Number field has inherited the
field id from the previous line - Address
Line 3.

Instead we want the tab to have no field

id - it should remain unchanged once data
has been put in the template.

A tabstop is inheriting a field

id when we do not want it
to (hence the background
shading).

Right-click the tabstop mark in the ruler to

reveal the Tab Options dialogue box.
By default Can be part of text field is on.
Turn it off now and press OK.
2

The screen will refresh and the field

shading over the tabstop should disappear.
When saved and reloaded or used by Infix
Server, the tabstop will remain un-fielded.

3
 Templates 232

Dynamic images Pro

Images can be named so that they can be targeted for replacement using Infix Server.
You can also control the scaling used when the image is replaced.

Choose the Object tool.

Select the image you want to name
then, using the right-mouse button,
choose: Tag.
The Tag dialogue box lists all of the
attributes that can be applied to an image.
Click on the Image name property and
enter a new value in the Value field at the
1 bottom of the dialogue.

Click on Replace scale mode to alter the

way in which the image is scaled when
replaced.
Two scaling modes are available during
automated image replacement:
Crop to fit
2 Fit inside
The affect of each mode is illustrated
below:

Fit inside Crop to fit

 Templates 233

Naming multiple images Pro

FlexiPDF Professional offers a short-cut for naming multiple images for dynamic
replacement by Infix Server. This also offers a way of checking whether images have
been named already.

In this example we will attribute a name to

each image in a real-estate advertisement,
ready to be used as a template by Infix
Server.
Choose the Object Tool from the
toolbar.
Then choose:
Object > Image > Tag > Ordering from the
main menu bar.
1

Enter a base Image Name for your images

and set the scaling mode to be used for
each. See the previous page for details of
scale modes.
The settings for individual images may be
2 altered later by using the method detailed
on the previous page.

Click on each image to name it.

Every time you click an image it will be
given a name by applying a new suffix to
the base name you supplied.
For example Image-1, Image-2, Image-3.
The name will displayed within the
bounding box of the image.

Continued...
 Templates 234

Continued from previous page

An example of an image showing its label

Image-4.
To finish naming images choose:
Object > Image > Tag > Ordering or change
to another tool.
4
Choosing:
Object > Image > Tag > Ordering at any
time in the future will show any existing
image labels.
 Templates 235

Dynamic line-art & graphics Pro

By grouping objects together with a text field, the entire group can be made to appear
or disappear depending upon the value of the text field.

This car ad template includes a triangular

sign for carrying optional messages such
SOLD or SALE.
If no substitute text is provided in the Infix
Server configuration file, the sign can be
automatically removed.
This approach may also be used together
with Text Fields.

Creating optional artwork

1. Use the Object Tool to select the artwork and associated text then group
them together using the Object > Group menu option.

2. Ensure the text field has the .d

suffix. This tells Infix Server to
delete the containing paragraph if it
becomes empty.
If Infix Server does delete the containing
paragraph, it also deletes the other items in
the group leaving just the text box and any
other paragraphs it may include.
 Templates 236

Dynamic page size Pro

It can be useful if a template automatically grows to fit the text being flowed into it.
Infix Server can do this by extending the length of a page and crop box as well as
stretching and moving any relevant graphics and page furniture.

Using the Object tool click inside

the main text box of the ad.
The size of this text box after
substituting text will be used to re-size the
entire ad.
Only one text box can be used to control
overall ad-size.

Choose: Text > Tag.

Set Can Grow to True
This means that instead of text overflow
resulting in an overset text box (and the
text being invisible), the text box will grow
downwards to accommodate all the text
placed in it.
Set Move Objects Below to True
All objects below the bottom line of the
text box will move as the text box grows
this includes any text, borders and the
actual page size itself.
2

Continued...
 Templates 237

Continued from previous page

Objects above key text

box will not be moved or
stretched.

Between top & bottom of key text

box, objects will be stretched as
the text box grows

Objects will be moved down as

key text box grows

Flowing new text into the key text box

causes the ad to grow (along with the page
& crop box)

Unchanged

Key text box has been extended.

Border around ad has been
stretched in proportion to the text
boxs growth

Objects moved downwards

Continued...
 Templates 238

Continued from previous page

Controlling dynamic page growth

To ensure pages grow in predetermined steps ( inch steps for example), set the
Growth Step in the Tag dialogue box to the required point size.

Here the Growth Step has been set to

inch. This means the entire ad will extend
downwards in jumps of inch.
This includes the pages media box and
crop box.

Notes
The minimum size of the page is the size before any substitutions have been made.
That is, the size when preparing the template in FlexiPDF Professional.
Decorative, repeating borders and certain kinds of artwork may not respond well to
being stretched vertically. Hence this approach may not be suitable for all ad types.
Preferences
Editing preferences
Editing preferences: Advanced Settings
Loading preferences
Saving preferences
Spelling preferences

239
 Preferences 240

Editing preferences
Access this pane from:
File > Preferences.

Unit of measurement
Choose from Inches, Centimetres,
Millimetres, Points and Picas. This
setting affects the ruler display and the
units used in most dialogue boxes when a
distance or size value is required.

Default Editing Tool

When a document is first opened,
FlexiPDF switches to the Text Editing tool
by default. You can change this behaviour
and have it select another tool instead.

Show changed text in:

When enabled (checked) FlexiPDF will highlight edited text in the chosen colour.
This highlighting will only be visible when the PDF is viewed or printed from
FlexiPDF and will not show in any other PDF viewer.

Insert smart quotes

When enabled, FlexiPDF will try to convert plain quotation marks as typed from
the keyboard into curly quotes. This may not be possible if the font used does not
contain either the opening or closing curly quotation mark.

Paste text with formatting

When pasting text into a PDF from another application FlexiPDF can ignore or take
notice of the formatting of the text. If this option is checked, FlexiPDF will try to
replicate the format (font, colour, size) of the text as it is pasted.
When not checked, text is always pasted using the current selected font, size and
colour.

User-defined stamps folder

The location of a folder containing user-defined stamps. By default this edit box is
empty. See User-defined stamps on page 163 for details.
 Preferences 241

Editing preferences: Advanced Settings

Detect bold / overprint text
Some documents simulate bold text by overprinting text rather than using a bold
version of a font. Normally FlexiPDF identifies overprinted characters on each page
and converts those found into single bold characters.
This check can be disabled to improve speed on complex pages or if FlexiPDF is
incorrectly identifying overprinted characters.

Detect tabs and Leader dots

Prior to editing, FlexiPDF searches for sequences of dots used as spacers in tabular
layouts such as the table of contents in a book. These leader-dot sequences are then
given special treatment by FlexiPDF and converted into a leader tab. This means that
during editing, the leader dots will grow/shrink correctly.
FlexiPDF also searches for large gaps between words and inserts equivalent tabstops
instead which also makes it easier to edit tabular data and bullet-lists.
Occasionally this may adversely affect the layout of a page. It may also cause a
significant initial delay on some more complex pages.

Detect underlined / strike-through text

Prior to editing, FlexiPDF searches for all text close to a graphic line of similar
length. It then removes the line and assumes the text was either underlines or strike-
through depending upon the position of the line relative to the text.
Occasionally this may yield undesirable results or cause a significant initial delay and
may be disabled for this reason.

Include cropped text when editing

When editing begins, FlexiPDF normally grabs all text on a page and converts
it into a form ready for interactive editing. When this option is enabled, it will grab
all text, even that hidden from view by a page crop. This is useful for searching text
that would otherwise be missed.
When disabled, you can use a page crop to limit the amount of text on a page that
FlexiPDF will see. This is useful for narrowing the affect of a search and replace or
for reducing unwanted layout changes at the start of editing.
For example, doing a search and replace on a documents page headers is difficult if
the page header uses the same font and size as the rest of the document. How do you
tell FlexiPDF to only search in the header and ignore the rest of the page contents?
 Preferences 242

The answer is to disable this feature, place a crop around the header area using the
Crop tool , then do the search and replace operation.

FlexiPDF will not only limit the search to text within the crop, it will also leave
all other text unaltered. After the search has finished, the crop can be removed by
choosing Document > Pages > Remove Crop to reveal the complete page text.

Diagnostic editing mode

This option is included for diagnostic use only. It stops FlexiPDF from converting
the text on a page into an editable form. Objects may still be manipulated but no text
editing can be performed whilst this option is enabled.
The option is turned off each time FlexiPDF is started.
 Preferences 243

Loading preferences
Access this pane from:
File > Preferences.

Default zoom
This is the zoom level used when a
document is opened. It does not alter the
PDF in any way.

Override initial zoom

When enabled, FlexiPDF will ignore
any initial-zoom suggestion contained
within the PDF and use the Default Zoom
specified above.

Initial View/Zoom/Page
Use these options to affect the way the current PDF is displayed when opened in
FlexiPDF or any other PDF viewer. You will need to save the PDF again in order for
any changes made here to become permanent.
 Preferences 244

Saving preferences
Access this pane from:
File > Preferences.

User name
This is the name that will be stored in the
change log (see Tracking changes on
page 149) generated whenever edits are
made to a PDF. It is also used to name any
sticky-notes, stamps or other annotations
you place on the document.

Make a backup when saving files

When using File > Save FlexiPDF can make an backup of the original file named
Backup of myfile.pdf
This can be disabled for large files or when saving over networks.

Autosave every:
When active, FlexiPDF saves a recovery backup of the current PDF every few
minutes. A gap of around 10 minutes is reasonable. You may wish to increase the
interval or disable auto-save for large files or when saving over slow networks.
If you need to recover changes to a document after a crash, open the document you
were editing. FlexiPDF will detect any autosave file that exists and ask you if you
want to open that instead.

Store layout info in PDF

When saving an edited PDF, FlexiPDF stores additional information such as tab-stop
positions, paragraph alignments, indents and margins etc. This makes it easier to edit
the PDF using FlexiPDF or Infix Server but also increase the size of the PDF file.
Choose Never if you want to keep the PDF file as small as possible and do not need to
keep the information.
Choose Always if the increase in file size is less important than ease of editing (or if
you are making templates for Infix Server)
Choose Sometimes to let FlexiPDF decide. This is the default.

Continued...
 Preferences 245

Continued from previous page

Spelling preferences
Access this pane from:
File > Preferences.

Language
This specifies the language to use for
spell-checking and for hyphenation.
It is important that this setting always
matches the language in your PDF
document. If it does not, the spell-
checker will be ineffective and the reflow
of your text will not work correctly.
FlexiPDF ships with only UK and USA
English language spelling dictionaries
but does include all hyphenation
dictionaries. If you choose a non-English
language FlexiPDF will ask you if you
wish to download the installer from SoftMakers website.
Though checked by SoftMaker, these installers are prepared by third parties and
install the spelling data required by the ASpell system used by FlexiPDF. If you have
access to more up-to-date spelling dictionaries, then these can be used instead of the
ones hosted on SoftMakers website.

Ignore words in UPPERCASE

Instructs the spell-checker system to skip words consisting of all upper-case letters.

Ignore words with numbers

Instructs the spell-checker system to skip words that contain numbers such as HT4

Hyphenate words
To better fit text within its text box, FlexiPDF will hyphenate certain words
according to language-specific hyphenation rules. This is mainly used on fully-
justified paragraphs but can also affect normally justified text. Disabling this feature
will have a document-wide effect.
To disable hyphenation on a per-paragraph basis, press the right-mouse button when
editing the paragraph and choose Disable hyphenation (Pro only).

User Interface language

 Preferences 246

The software is available in a number of different languages. If this drop-down

menu does not list the language you require, please re-install the software. During
installation, you will be prompted to choose the user interface language to be
installed.
If you do not have a copy of the installer, please download the latest FlexiPDF demo
from SoftMakers website (www.softmaker.com).
If you are using an older version of the software, you can download a copy from the
download page at www.softmaker.com/en/download
Appendix
Custom spelling dictionaries
Editing non-English text
Fonts in PDF

247
 Appendix 248

Editing non-English text

When editing PDFs written in various different languages please remember the
following:
hyphenation will only work if the correct language is chosen using the
File > Preferences menu option. If the correct language is not available, it may
be better to disable hyphenation.
spell check requires the correct language to be specified using the
File > Preferences menu.

FlexiPDF only supports editing of text read left-to-right. This means editing of
Arabic & Hebrew texts is not supported.

Double byte support

FlexiPDF fully supports copy/paste of double-byte characters.
A double-byte character can be typed directly by holding down Alt while entering the
decimal value of the character using the numeric keypad (ensure that NumLock is
lit on your keyboard). The character will be inserted when you release the Alt key.
For example: Alt+0190 =
(you do not need to type the + character)
The character codes can be found by using the Character Map utility in most versions
of Microsoft Windows.

Display of double-byte Characters

When a PDF does not include a required font, FlexiPDF substitutes one of its built-in
fonts. These fonts cover the standard Latin character sets plus Hiragana, Katakana
and a selection of special characters.
If you install the optional Asian Font Pack (available from www.softmaker.com/en/
download) the built-in fonts can be extended to include a useful selection of Chinese
and Japanese characters.
Characters for which no substitute exists will appear as squares in FlexiPDF but may
display correctly in other viewers.
 Appendix 249

Fonts in PDF
To be truly portable, a PDF must include all the fonts it needs to display correctly.
These embedded fonts describe the way in which each character is drawn.
Typically there will be some characters in a font that are not used in a PDF. In this
case, a font-subset may be embedded to help reduce the size of the PDF.
A PDF may also simply name the fonts it needs rather than include them. Provided
the viewers computer has the named fonts installed, the PDF will display correctly. If
not, the viewer program will try to use a substitute font that is similar in appearance.
Certain fonts are always available on every computer that can view PDFs. These are
Courier, Times, Helvetica and Symbol. Consequently these fonts are not commonly
embedded.

Font considerations
Editing text written with a font that is embedded does not normally present any
problems - all of the fonts characters are available.
When just a subset of a font is embedded, FlexiPDF will search for the required font
within your computers system fonts and will automatically load and use it if found.
If no match can be found, you will have to use a different font instead.
For example, a PDF that contains a single headline written in the font Josephs
Brush:

may include character definitions for the following letters only:

 Appendix 250

Custom spelling dictionaries

When you press the Add button during spell check, FlexiPDF records the word you
are adding in a custom dictionary file on disc.
If you add a word by mistake you can edit the custom dictionary by hand using any
standard text editor (such as Notepad).
If you already have a custom dictionary you want FlexiPDF to use you can add its
contents to FlexiPDFs existing dictionary using a text editor.

Locating the custom dictionary

All of the personal word list files (*.pws) for each language are stored in the same
folder. A *.pws file is only created if you have added words during a spell check,.
On Windows XP, the default installation path would be:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Aspell\personal

On Windows Vista, Windows 7 and 8:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Aspell\personal
or
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Aspell\personal

Format of custom dictionary

The *.pws dictionary file is a simple list of words, each on a new line. An example is
shown below:
personal_ws-1.1 es 7
Adstract
Technology
SoftMaker
Ltd
Bushnell
Norwich
Guy

The number at the end of the first line is the count of words in the list. The language
code is prior to that - in this case es for Spanish.
Changes to the custom dictionary will take effect the next time FlexiPDF is launched.