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Belja Nemanja

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  1. Keep Layers from PDF when opening the file in Illustrator.

    39 votes

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    13 comments  ·  Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests » File Save, Import and Export  ·  Admin →
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    Belja Nemanja commented  · 

    For anyone else who finds this request, there is one check worth making before spending hours separating the artwork by hand. Open the PDF in Acrobat and see whether its Layers panel still contains groups you can switch on and off independently. If it does, the structure may still be inside the PDF even though Illustrator opens everything under Layer 1.

    We ran into this same handoff problem and first solved it for our own workflow. PDFLayerExtract now lets you preview those surviving groups free and, when they are usable, prepares separated, named files for Illustrator. It cannot recreate the original InDesign, CAD or AI document, and it cannot recover groups that were flattened before the PDF was made.

    I work on PDFLayerExtract. The free compatibility check is here: https://pdflayerextract.com/?utm_source=adobe_uservoice&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=keep_pdf_layers&utm_content=PLE-0027

  2. Illustrator 2025 (29.8.7) flatten layers of PDF saved in version 2026 (30.5.1)

    4 votes

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    3 comments  ·  Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests » Layers  ·  Admin →
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    Belja Nemanja commented  · 

    This looks like Illustrator 2026 is reading the embedded Illustrator data, while older versions fall back to the PDF representation. One useful check is to open the file in Acrobat and look at the Layers panel. Are the original layers independently visible and switchable there? If they are, the PDF still contains recoverable layer groups and there may be a way to bring them into Illustrator without rebuilding everything manually.