Can You Export an InDesign Layout to an Acrobat with Layers?

I designed a brochure with two black-plate text layers, one in English and another in Spanish, so that each language could be output from the same document by turning on and off Layer visibility in the Layers palette. After finishing the layout, I found out my client had to change vendors and another printer was going to handle the job. This new printer wanted the brochure supplied as an Acrobat. Is it possible to Export a layout to a multiple Layer Acrobat? The “Create Acrobat Layers” in the General section of the Export Adobe PDF dialog always seems to be grayed out.

No problem! If you change the Compatibility of the PDF to Acrobat 6 or higher in the General section of the Export dialog, “Create Acrobat Layers” can be selected. Layers did not exist in PDFs before Acrobat 6. When you open the Acrobat, there will be a Layers tab with all your InDesign layers listed.

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.