Has anyone been able to split a PAH PDF after it's been printed? A need for us is when a presenter wants a block of tickets to distribute themselves, we need to send 50+ tickets to them. Traditionally, we've printed hard tickets and mailed. But we'd like to do this electronically if possible. I assume we could reprint subline items individually but that would be cumbersome. I'd rather just take the order PDF and split it into single ticket PDF files. However, when I open with Adobe Acrobat Pro and try to extract pages, it asks for the password. But the PDF template isn't protected as far as I can tell - and I don't know the password. Is there a standard password that the PDF generator uses to secure the output files? Obviously we don't want the PDF to be editable in general. But in this case, we'd like to circumvent security in order to split one file into multiple files.
Odele
I don't have an answer to this unfortunately, but I have been unable to 're-print' each ticket via subline items...if anyone has a solution to that, I'd love to know.
Tessitura support said that we can print the subline items individually. But from what you're saying - sounds like you need to do it before the order is printed because you cannot reprint subline items individually? That would be unfortunate. I can't test this yet - I haven't done the upgrade that includes this feature.
You can physically print hard tickets by sub line item (choose the specific tickets you want on the Sub Line Items tab and click Print Ticket instead of Print Order). I don't believe that you can do this for the PAH pdf; you can only ask that it be re-sent in full.
Correct. I REALLY hope V16 includes re-printing PAH by sub line item. It causes a lot of issues having to resend the whole subscription order...even tickets that have already been marked as 'attended' (as far as my testing goes).
And we have the issue that if there are too many tickets in an order (and, therefore, a pdf that is too large), the email with the PAHT will not actually send, even though it says it has in the order...
How big is your pdf? I'm assuming that you've compressed it as much as you can (I use https://www.adobe.com/au/acrobat/online/compress-pdf.html to get it pretty slim)
Heath - I really don't know. It's just the PDF of the PAHT that is automatically generated and sent from with Tessitura as far as I know (I'm really not the under the hood person....). I am assuming that the too large PDF is the cause of patrons not receiving their PAHT, since it seems to be a consistent no-show for orders with quite a few tickets, whether multiple tickets to a couple of events or two tickets to each of 10 or 12 events. Because we moved the default to PAHT instead of Mail for online orders during covid - it is definitely showing up quite a bit....
That's ok we can check it out. If you CC Box Office into your sent tickets how big is the PDF ticket attachment for a single ticket?
When I build our PAHT templates in Adobe Acrobat DC it usually comes out pretty big - about 1Mb. That's way too big for emailing loads of tickets. So I take that template and run it through the adobe link compression above and get it down to about a third.
So PAHT loads ticket data into a template that your org has constructed and sits in a Tessitura's Production Drive P:\PAH Templates\PAH. Teach ticket design has it's own template named after the ticket design number it's associated to. You can access PAHT templates from File Mover.
If the size of your single ticket file is too big, take a copy of the template, run it through that compression, pop it back (in test first) and give it a try. It might solve your troubles. Let me know if you want to run through it in a zoom call.
We have split pages of PDF tickets into separate files. The staff that does this uses Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (not free). Since it costs money each year, only a few staff (1 or 2) have the software on their computer (not me). It allows you to cut in between the PDF pages and split them into different files. Another option is https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/split-pdf.html. You would want to read their terms and conditions.
Heath - this may be a moot point. Just found out we're possibly switching to mobile tickets instead of PAHT...if we decide to keep PAHT, I'll take your suggestions to my manager.
Thanks, all. Just following up to say that I was able to use a Chrome extension (Smallpdf) to unlock the PAH PDF file then Adobe Acrobat Pro to split by page into multiple PDF files. Although unsupported, this method worked for us. Looking forward to the day when we can reprint PAH/mobile by sub line item.
Due to the way we reopened we send member tickets by sub-line item via a custom report that Tess built for us - it works great. If you need that option.
Just to confirm I'm understanding. You had Tess build a custom report that allows you to re-send pah tickets by sub-line item (instead of having to re-send the entire order)?
Yes. We send member tickets from packages out two weeks before the first performance. I'd be happy to share the parameters. It sends the ticket barcode and some pertinent information but there is a limit to customization - so they aren't as visually appealing as our PAH tickets that come from separate orders.