Flatten Layers issue

[DomH]

Hi all

I am working on an Action List which
- Flattens all layers
- Selects all and assigns to a new Layer 1
- Assigns spot colours to separate layers and lastly deletes Layer 1 (i.e. deletes anything that isn't a designated spot colour). It works, except for properly flattening layers (particularly when nested within an INDD exported layer).

For some reason to get it to work as intended I have to run a separate action to flatten layers, save the document and reopen, or simply flatten layers through Acrobat, then run the action ist, but this isn't a one button solution.

Does anyone know why the "Flatten layers" action doesn't seem to be working as intended?

[JimmyHartington]

Try adding the action "Split action list" after the flatten layers.
This works a little bit as save for Pitstop, when you make changes which previously made you need to save.

[DomH]

That's a handy action to know, but unfortunately I don't think it has helped here.

I should have mentioned in the initial post that whenever I save the file after running the script the top layer is always changed to hidden upon saving (regardless of what the layer is called). This issue doesn't occur when manually flattening the PDF through Acrobat or if there are no layers.

[JimmyHartington]

Are you able to share a pdf before processing. A pdf of the expected result + the action list you have?

[yosimo]

Hi,

is it really necessary to flatten the layers and merge them together first?
Apparently, the goal is to move all spot color objects to separate layers based on their spot colors.
To do this, I would first delete everything that isn't a spot color, and then assign each spot color to its own layer: