Bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat

More and more faculty and staff are converting their electronic documents to PDF for
ease of distribution. PDF files can be easily emailed, printed, and posted online for
download without the worry of software or system incompatibilities. It is truly a cross-
platform format. For a refresher on PDF files, see the March 2002 CITL newsletter at
http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/academic/citl/news36.pdf

Adding bookmarks to an Acrobat document provides the reader with a navigational

structure to move through the document more efficiently, an interactive chapter list or
table of contents if you wish. Bookmarks save the reader from scrolling through a large
document looking for a specific topic. Double- clicking on a bookmark takes the reader
to the page related to that particular bookmark.

To see a bookmark in action, open up the Adobe Acrobat Guide. This PDF document
already has bookmarks associated with it. From Acrobat, go to Help > Acrobat Guide.
The Guide PDF is now open. Double-click on one of the bookmarks. Notice how the
document page changes.
Creating Bookmarks Automatically

Acrobat (full program) will generate structured bookmarks automatically from, a

Microsoft Word document if it contains headings and subheadings. Other elements within
the document such as a table of contents can be made to link to their relevant areas within
the document as well. The following is a chart of Word document elements that can be
converted to bookmarks and other navigational structures when converting to a PDF.

Document Element Converts To

Headings and paragraph styles PDF bookmarks

Heading levels and paragraph styles PDF structured bookmarks

Page numbers in table of contents Links to the destinations in the

document

Figures in list of figures Links to the destinations in the

document

Footnotes and endnote citations Links to the notes themselves

Comments PDF text notes

Text boxes PDF article threads

Document properties, such as author and creation date PDF document information

Cross-references within a document PDF links

Links to other documents PDF links

Links to destinations within a PDF document, or to another PDF links

PDF document

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) PDF Weblinks

To create bookmarks automatically from a Word document, open up the document in

Microsoft Word. Under the File menu, select Create Adobe PDF… Alternately, click the
Create Adobe PDF icon on the Word toolbar.
The Acrobat PDFMaker dialog
box is now visible. Under
Creation options, select the Use
Acrobat Distiller option and
check the Print via Distiller’s
printer checkbox. Under distiller
settings, choose either
PrintOptimized or
ScreenOptimized. Under File
options, select View the PDF
file after creating it and Prompt
for the PDF filename.

Click the Output tab in the

PDFMaker dialog box. If the
document contains a Table of
Contents, footnotes and
endnotes or any URLs, select
these options and “links” to the
appropriate webpage, citation,
footnote, or page will be
created. Select a Destination
Magnification from the drop
down menu. Inherit Zoom
preserves the magnification
setting of the original
document, Fit Page resizes the
page to fit entirely in the
Acrobat window.
 Click the Bookmarks tab in
the PDFMaker dialog box.
Select the Word Headings
options. This will map all
the headings in the
document to bookmarks.
Select the appropriate
Destination Magnification
at which to view the
bookmark when it is
selected.
(For a detailed description
of other options in this
dialog box, click the Help
button. A PDF document
detailing the conversion of
Microsoft Word documents
to PDF will open)

Click the Display tab. Link

Appearance sets how links
will display when the PDF
file is viewed. (If any of
the options such as Table
of Contents, footnotes and
endnotes or any URLs,
were selected in the Output
tab, this option would be
relevant). The Document
Open Options allow on to
specify what is displayed
when the document first
opens. If bookmarks are
created, choose Bookmarks
and Page. The navigation
pane will be displayed
showing the bookmarks.
This way, it will be
immediately apparent to
the viewer that there is
organized structure to the document. The Page Number option sets which page first
displays when the document is opened. By default this will be page 1.
Click the Apply button in the PDFMaker dialog box to accept these settings. Click Create
to generate the PDF file and follow the prompts. The converted document will open up in
Acrobat.

If no bookmarks are visible in the navigation pane, it is because the headings in the
original Word document were not a true Word formatted heading. Go back to the
original Word document and hilight a text heading. Notice the text style option. To make
this a true heading, select one of the heading styles from the pull down menu. This is the
way to format a heading in Word. In order for the many navigational options to convert
properly in Acrobat, they must first be properly formatted in Word. Scroll through the
style elements in this pull down menu to see the many available options.

Start to format sections of

your documents using
this menu.

Manually Create a Bookmark in a PDF Document

It is possible to manually create bookmarks in a PDF document. Try converting a Word

document to PDF using PDFWriter. This creates a document with no navigational
structure. (Open up the document in Microsoft Word. Under the File menu, select Create
Adobe PDF… The PDFMaker dialog box appears. Select the PDFWriter option under the
Creation options. Click Create and follow the prompts.)
Open up the PDF document in Acrobat. If the navigation pane is not visible, click the
Show/Hide Navigation Pane button in the Acrobat command bar or, click the Navigation
Pane button. Click the Bookmarks tab to bring it to the foreground.

Navigate to the section of the document that has a title or heading. Select the Text Select
tool from the toolbar. Click and highlight the heading. Hold down the mouse button on
the triangle in the upper right corner of the bookmarks palette to display the bookmarks
palette menu, and choose New Bookmark, A bookmark with the title of the highlighted
text appears in the bookmark list.

To create another bookmark, click off the bookmark that was just created. It will no
longer be highlighted. Scroll down to the page in the PDF document where there is
another heading that you want to create a bookmark for. Select the text again as above.
Hold down the mouse button on the triangle in the upper right corner of the bookmarks
palette and choose New Bookmark. Repeat this process until all the desired bookmarks
have been created. Save the PDF file.

Bookmarks are an easy and convenient way to navigate through large PDF documents.
Start adding this feature to your PDF documents.