Hello, my name is Erin.
I’m a professional copy editor who shares writing tips for the real world on my blog
at erinwrightwriting.com.
In PDFs, bookmarks are links that appear in the Bookmarks panel.
They are usually organized as a table of contents.
Today we’re going to look at three ways to create bookmarks in PDFs using Adobe Acrobat.
First, we’ll create a bookmark in the PDF without selecting specific text.
Then we’ll create a bookmark connected to specific text.
Finally, we’ll create a bookmark directly in the bookmarks panel.
A bonus section at the end of this video discusses the differences between bookmarks and internal links in PDFs.
I will be using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.
The steps are the same in Acrobat Standard DC and Acrobat Standard 2017.
However, please note that these steps won’t work in Acrobat Reader,
which is Adobe’s free PDF software,
because Reader doesn't have an option for creating bookmarks.
But, any bookmark created in Adobe Acrobat can be viewed and used in Acrobat Reader.
This section shows how to create a bookmark without selecting specific text.
This is the best method if you want to bookmark a whole page without opening the Bookmarks panel.
To begin, right-click on the page you want to bookmark.
Then, select Add Bookmark from the pop-up menu.
Enter a label for your new bookmark in the textbox labeled Untitled in the Bookmarks panel.
If you need to edit a bookmark label, right-click on the bookmark
and then select Rename from the pop-up menu.
Once you’ve entered your label, save your PDF in order to save your new bookmark.
This section shows how to create a bookmark with a text selection.
This is the best method when you want to turn short pieces of text
such as chapter titles, headings, and subheadings into bookmarks.
To begin, select the Selection tool in the toolbar.
Then, select the text that should be linked to the bookmark.
Right-click on the selected text.
And select Add Bookmark from the pop-up menu.
Note that the selected text becomes a bookmark label in the Bookmarks panel.
Lastly, save your PDF in order to save your new bookmark.
This section shows how to add a bookmark to a whole page or to a specific piece of text from inside the Bookmarks panel.
First, select the text you want to bookmark
or scroll to the page you want to bookmark, in general.
Then, select the New Bookmark button in the Bookmarks panel.
If you bookmarked a whole page, enter the label for your new bookmark in the textbox labeled Untitled in the Bookmarks panel.
Note that if you selected text to bookmark, that text will become the label automatically.
As always, save your PDF in order to save your new bookmark.
As you’ve seen in this tutorial, PDF bookmarks are links connected to pages or specific text
such as chapter titles, headings, or subheadings.
The bookmarks then appear as linked navigation in the Bookmarks panel.
Conversely, internal links connect text or objects to specific page views in the PDF,
but they don’t appear in the Bookmarks panel.
Instead, they are like links in a webpage.
Please see my separate tutorial on how to create internal links in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat.
The transcript for this video along with many other writing tips appears on erinwrightwriting.com, which is linked below.
Feel free to leave me a comment if you have a question about Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat
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