Creating Bookmarks

Bookmarks are an indexing mechanism used in Acrobat PDF files. They typically act like tables of contents, letting you view the organization of a document through a set of clickable headings. Figure 33-3 shows an example file viewed in Acrobat.

Figure 33-3: An example PDF document with bookmarks (at left).

InDesign has two ways to create bookmark entries. One is simply to create a table of contents using the standard InDesign Table of Contents tool. (Be sure that the Create PDF Bookmarks option is checked in the Table of Contents dialog box.) The other is to specify bookmarks to specific pages, objects, and/or text using the Bookmarks pane. Figure 33-4 shows the Bookmarks pane (Window ‚ Interactive ‚ Bookmarks).

Figure 33-4: The Bookmarks pane.

New Feature ‚  

The Bookmarks pane is new to InDesign CS. Previous versions could only create bookmarks from InDesign tables of contents.

Cross-Reference ‚  

Chapter 9 covers the table-of-contents feature

To create your own bookmark entries ‚ either instead of or in addition to having InDesign use the table of contents ‚ choose what you want the bookmark to refer to (what will appear on-screen in the PDF file when a user clicks the bookmark in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader). This can be a text selection or an object (frame or line); then choose New Bookmark from the Bookmarks pane's palette menu. If nothing is selected, the bookmark will be to the current page. After you create the bookmark, use the Rename Bookmark menu option to give it a name ‚ this is the name that will appear in the Bookmarks pane in Acrobat.

Tip ‚  

If you want a bookmark to be a subentry of another bookmark ‚ the equivalent to a second-level or third-level headline in a table of contents ‚ make sure that, before you create the bookmark, you've selected a bookmark in the Bookmarks pane. Any new bookmark is made a child of the selected bookmark.

The other Bookmarks palette options are straightforward:

• Choose Delete Bookmark to delete any bookmarks selected in the pane.

• Choose Go to Selected Bookmark to jump to that page in your InDesign document. An easier way is to simply double-click the bookmark entry in the pane.

• Choose Sort Benchmarks to sort benchmark subentries ‚ this alphabetizes second-level, third-level, and other page-based subentries, and it sorts in order of appearance on the page any text- and/or object-based entries. It will not sort the top-level bookmarks, which appear in sequential order from the beginning of the document.

However you create your bookmarks, you have InDesign place them into your PDF file during PDF export. In the General pane of the PDF Export dialog box (choose File ‚ Export, or press z +E or Ctrl+E, and choose Acrobat PDF in the Format pop-up menu), make sure the Bookmarks section is checked in the pane's Include section.