Comments on: Creating Interactive PDFs from InDesign (6)

By: Ardal Powell

Ardal Powell — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:11:57 +0000

“The page-numbers that are generated as part of an InDesign index become hyperlinks in the generated PDF that link back to the page in the document.”

They do not. Thwe instructions given above do not work.

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 10:33:04 +0000

@Arnold

The page-numbers that are generated as part of an InDesign index become hyperlinks in the generated PDF that link back to the page in the document.

You shouldn’t have to do this manually in Acrobat Pro. Do you have the “Hyperlinks” checkbox selected in the “Include” section of the “Export Adobe PDF” dialog?

By: Arnold Gregory

Arnold Gregory — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:15:03 +0000

Part of my job is formatting two 400 pg course catalogs for Embry-Riddle. We include a substantial index which Indesign generates. We have been adding links to the referenced pages in Acrobat Pro making the index interactive. It is time consuming and has to be done over when a new index is generated. Uuug. Is there a way or plugin or something that would auto generate links to the referenced pages in Indesign when the index is created?

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 12:29:53 +0000

@Hannah you’re most welcome. Glad my blog-post was of help.

By: Hannah

Hannah — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:54:34 +0000

Thank you!! I have looked through so many guides and tutorials on this topic and couldn’t find what I was missing until now. Your screencaps are extremely helpful!

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:24:58 +0000

@Mai Well done!

By: Mai

Mai — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:40:56 +0000

Hi Cari, thank you so much for this tutorial. I used InDesign CS4, it helped me a lot to make my portfolio in .PDF
here’s my finished work (it’s a heavy file 17 MB, sorry but I don’t know how to compress it more) :/

http://maishakr.com/portafolio2011.pdf
greetings!

By: Christopher

Christopher — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:34:43 +0000

Cari,

My questions are about rollovers. Once I create my toc, is there a way to make a rollover effect other than the “hand” either in InDesign or in Acrobat?

Also, once the user clicks on an item, can the rollover effect “stick” till another link is selected? Can this be done without creating a button for each link?

Thanks,

Chris

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:13:12 +0000

@Gary

If I’m understanding you correctly you are editing the Generated TOC text. This will out-date the TOC, making it invalid.

If you want to use a custom-written TOC and create bookmarks for it as well, then you’ll have to look at creating hyperlinks from the new TOC text to page-references, as well as add Bookmarks in InDesign manually.

Cari

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:47:17 +0000

Cari,

My bookmarks are used as hyperlinks in the final PDF so when you click on the text in the TOC on the pdf page you jump to the anchor text page. The only problem is when I edit the text in the TOC to be more general than the anchor text was, I loose the hyperlink in the PDF. When I try to assign a hyperlink and anchor to the new text I have typed in InDesign the hyperlink panel grays out the “create new hyperlink option. Do I need to create a work around or am i missing something?

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:27:41 +0000

@Doug

It depends a little on what your source files are.

If the instruction manual is already a PDF, then you can use Adobe Acrobat to build links for your Table of Contents. If there is no TOC in the PDF, you can add an extra page to the PDF as well and add the links.

If it is an InDesign file, you could ask a designer or InDesign user to build dynamic table of contents and export the PDF for you WITH hyperlinks & bookmarks enabled and you’d be done

If you plan to do more work and expect to be producing publications more often, then definitely look into purchasing InDesign and do a quick start training course in it as well.

Hope this helps,

Cari

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:24:34 +0000

If I want to copy an instruction manual with table of contents (with permission) with the ability to click on a subject in the table of contents to access that particular section and make it a DVD for sale then I have to purchase the InDesign program?

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:36:06 +0000

@JT. I’d probably need to see the document. But it sounds like you might need to introduce an additional paragraph style for that short title? and in the TOC Style set the settings for TOC formatting?

By: Joanne

Joanne — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:58:41 +0000

Hei!
This is great to find some info about interactive pdfs! We have discovered another little (annoying) problem I wonder if you have any tips about. We can’t seem to make a short chapter title and maintain formatting on the TOC in Indesign, even though all our styles are in order. I don’t think it shows on the pdf in the bookmarks, but some of our bookmarks do not maintain formatting in the pdf either. Its just a small thing, it just doesn’t look nice or professional when you miss the formatting. Function is still there though. Tips would b greatly appreciated!
JT

By: Cari Jansen

Cari Jansen — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:19:27 +0000

Hi Rikka,

Yep you can most certainly achieve that…

but… you’ll have to break-up your chapters into individual documents, and define a new TOC-Style for the Chapter Level TOCs.

Now for the overall TOC, you’d need to ensure you place all the chapters in a ‘Book’ using InDesign’s Book Feature, and re-define the overall TOC Style to ‘include Book Documents’

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Cari