Re: Bookmarks not exporting from InDesign to PDF in CS4

[boblevine]

Would putting it on a hidden layer work?

Bob

[Sandee...@adobeforums.com]

My copy of CS4 running under Leopard is able to generate bookmarks to the exported PDF without any problem.

But I wonder if you you have found an example of a drastic change from CS3 behavior to CS4.

In CS3 and before, you could keep the TOC on the pasteboard and it would still generate the bookmarks in the ID document as well as the PDF.

In CS4 that behavior has changed.

The bookmarks are created in ID but if the TOC is on the pasteboard, they don't show in the final PDF.

The workaround is to generate the TOC at the end of the document and then just not export those pages or delete them in Acrobat.

I am alerting the CS4 product manager about this as he is interested in the bookmarks situation.

[Sandee...@adobeforums.com]

Would putting it on a hidden layer work?

Sadly, no!

It's as if some engineer decided to screw up every work around I used to show to generate the bookmarks without the TOC.

Putting it on hidden layers doesn't work, nor does setting the TOC not to print!

ARRRRGGGGHHH!

[c_go...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks -- it was an excellent question & I should have included that fact. Yes, it is checked. I have even tried it with one document with one bookmark. It seems like if I actually CREATE an individual bookmark, it picks it up. But it can't recognize bookmarks generated from the Table of Contents. I've tested this on other computer installations with the same results. I've been producing this format for over 2 years without incident. I've checked and double checked all the settings. This one has me stumped. I can't believe that the feature would have gotten accidently left out. Does yours work in CS4 for generated Tables of Contents??

[boblevine]

> It's as if some engineer decided to screw up every work around I used to show to generate the bookmarks without the TOC.

Quite the sense of humor they have, no?

Bob

[c_go...@adobeforums.com]

Postscript

I figured out an avoiding-extra work-workaround

Just stretch an EMPTY piece of the TOC onto the main printable doc area if it's a small TOC
OR
You can make the print leading teeny-tiny and the color none or paper. I found out it ALL has to fit on the page to show up.

[c_go...@adobeforums.com]

Many thanks to all! I've got my workaround and hopefully the Adobe folks will someday save us from the extra step!

[Jeremy_...@adobeforums.com]

This is a pretty serious issue for me - can we assume that Adobe are looking into this, or should we file a bug report?

[Sandee...@adobeforums.com]

File a bug report.

I told the product team about this change. I don't like it either. But I'm not too sure they understand why it's a problem.

Meanwhile I found another solution:

Create the TOC on the last few pages of the document. Export to PDF. Then dump those pages in Acrobat.

But I would like a situation where you can use the Create TOC dialog box with a checkbox to "Create Bookmarks Only". This would create the bookmarks without needing a real TOC.

[Isra...@adobeforums.com]

I have not had success with making PDF Bookmarks in InDesign CS4.

I have a book with many documents in it. One document is a TOC after the cover page. The last document is a TOC for making PDF Bookmarks.

I cannot use Export because I have a book of documents so I have to Print to PDF from the book pod.

I have tried including and excluding the TOC for making PDF Bookmarks in the selection of documents for printing and I still don’t get Bookmarks.

Israel
Technical writer and technical illustrator

[jong...@adobeforums.com]

I cannot use Export because I have a book of documents so I have to Print

?? "Export book" is also an option in the Book menu.
Be sure to have no document selected, as it will not be available if you have.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Two things.

First, I wonder if it would be enough if the TOC story were to touch the bleed or slug area (presuming you include either of those in the export).

Second, I don't do lots of long docs, so I don't use TOC very much in my work, but about a month ago I set up a monograph for the local art museum and it had both regular TOC and a Table of figures. The bookmarks form the TOC exported, but those from the Table of Figures (just a second TOC) did not. Does anyone have an idea why this might be?

Peter

[c_go...@adobeforums.com]

Automatically generated bookmarks are broken in InDesign 4.
Here is the workaround that I use:
Create TOC. I use teeny font size & leading & no page numbers to accommodate my long TOC entries. Place the TOC on the page. Stretch the right side of the box to overlap a page of the document - can be on the margin. It doesn't matter. Works 100% of the time, understanding that 100% of the entries have to fit within that TOC text box.
This applies to automatically generated bookmarks. Manually generated bookmarks do not have the problem. Make sure this is done to ANY document for which you want its bookmarks to register in the final product, whether standalone or as a part of a book.

[Sandee...@adobeforums.com]

I've just been exporting the PDF with the pages for the TOC at the end of the document.

And then deleting those pages in Acrobat.

[Veronique_...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the tip...
I was loosing my hair trying to figure out how to get my TOC bookmarks exported to PDF.
I am working with a book made of multiple InDesign documents. What I did is create a new blank document that I add at the end of the book and where I create a dummy TOC with the options:
- Create PDF bookmarks
- Include book documents.

After placing the TOC on the page, I change the font size to something very small and then created threaded text boxes so as to have the full TOC visible but fitting on one single page.

Then I export the book to PDF and delete the last pages in Acrobat.

Voila!

[Roy_...@adobeforums.com]

This discussion provided exactly the information I needed to get my TOC bookmarks to export to PDF, thanks! I'm just writing to say that I wasn't anxious to have to deal with my file in Acrobat, so I tried putting the TOC on a page added at the end as suggested, but then simply not exporting that last page to the PDF from InDesign. This worked, and I didn't have to do anything in Acrobat.

[Sandee...@adobeforums.com]

This worked, and I didn't have to do anything in Acrobat.

Cool!

[Matthew Laun]

Hi all,
I've reproduced the problem of bookmarks failing to work when exporting books that contain docs with bookmarks created in CS3 or earlier. I've some suspicions that this is due to an oversight in the conversion of the book which stems from our overhaul of some of the relevant code in CS4. I'm not as savvy with the TOC feature, so I suggest you rely on the advice already given. But if you're working with buttons, or have a smaller number of bookmarks to deal with, you should be able to get things to work by navigating to page that contains the bookmark, select some text on the page, then click New Bookmark in the Bookmark panel. Instead of creating a new bookmark, it will add a Text Anchor to your existing Bookmark. Now, exporting the book to PDF should produce the expected results. I'm logging this for the developers to investigate right after this post.

Sincerely,
Matt

[Graham...@adobeforums.com]

Matt,

May I first say that it is so refreshing to read an informed and honest response from Adobe.

Your suggestion to create a new bookmark with the existing bookmark selected is a viable workaround for a bug that I reported in CS4 - Buttons no longer work with Page Bookmarks - <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b782af/1>

To fix my legacy CS3 documents with buttons linked to Page Bookmarks I now just have to go through each Bookmark adding a new text anchor for each and all the "Go To" actions in the buttons are updated. I still hope this "oversight" will get fixed soon though...

Graham.