Carl Young’s AcroViews

While the response to my earlier post on hidden layers has been the sound of one hand clapping, I’d like to say a bit more.

To recap, the PDFMaker in Microsoft Office creates a hidden layer when the option for “make accessible” is turned on. This is not a big deal for most people, but for those who must meet certain standards (like PDF/A), it creates a problem.

There’s a new way to find these hidden layers. In Acrobat 8 Pro, choose Adviced > Preflight. Pick any profiel and click Edit. Click on the Plus sign and then put your cursor on the Custom check option. An amazingly sophisticated list of things the preflighter can analyze shows up. Scroll down or Search until you see Layers Used, and then create a custom profile that checks for layers.

Analyze a PDF created with the accessibility options on and you will discover that PDFMaker does, indeed create a layer that does not show up in the Layers Navigation Pane.

Interestingly, the Microsoft Word 2007 Beta pdf converter adds tags for accessibility, but not a hidden layer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Acrobat Annoyances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.