Is there a way to have InDesign respect the artboard set in Illustrator?

Question

When placing a `*.ai` in InDesign, InDesign auto-crops the frame if part of the Illustrator artboard is empty. Even if I outline the Illustrator artboard with a no-stroke, no-fill rectangle, InDesign will lop off the part where it sees no ink.Is there a way to have InDesign respect the Illustrator artboard size?

Answer 1

When you go to place your .ai file into InDesign there should be a check box at the bottom of the "Place" window that says "Show Import Options". If you check that box and the click on your .ai file to place it into the InDesign document it will bring up a preview window of the .ai file with two tabs to the right of the preview pane ("General" and "Layers") with some buttons underneath the tabs. If you click on the "General" tab you'll see a section that says "Pages" and a second section that says "Options". Under the "Options" section there's text that says "Crop to:" followed by a drop down menu. Within the drop down menu you'll see several options for how InDesign will handle the cropping of the imported/placed file. If you choose either "crop", "trim", "bleed", or "media" from the drop down menu it should crop to the Illustrator artboard instead of to the artwork itself.