Preserving Word bookmarks and links in PDF

[jimwebber]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Is there a way to keep the internal links and bookmarks that are created in Word in the PDF file that is output from the document? I am manually recreating these links in Acrobat in the PDF afterward. This can be very time consuming.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Jim,

It's my understanding that no changes to the unfortunate lack of this
facility on the Mac platform have occurred in relation to Word 2008 and
Acrobat -- but as I am not using Word 2008 you would be well advised to come
back and see if anyone who knows better makes a post.

I agree: it is a time-waster. I understand that Windows versions of Word and
Acrobat have this facility. PDFs created from Apple's Pages application
retain the hyperlinks, and it might be practicable to route a Word document
through Pages before PDFing (I'm assuming the hyperlinks will be retained
after the Word => Pages journey; haven't got time to check for you at the
moment).

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[jimwebber]

Thanks for the response, Clive,

I tried opening the Word document (docx) in Pages and you are right: The hyperlinks from the contents page come through fine. Bookmarks are a different story. Word automatically creates a bookmark for every line that has a headline style applied. Those don't come through. It is really nice to have them in a PDF, though, since once you click on an item in the contents, you can't easily navigate back.

I have to admit, after experimenting with creating bookmarks in Word 2008, I have a more and more fuzzy grasp of what they are. The only thing that shows up in the document map pane are the automatically generated "bookmarks" that go to the document headings. Very confusing, but bottom line. Only way I know to have bookmarks in the PDF is to create them after the fact in Acrobat.