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2008-01-10 11:23:50
cmount
Registered: Jan 7 2008
Posts: 8

I'm using Adobe Standard 8.1.1, MS Word 2003, Windows XP SP2

I've searched the forums, acrobat website, etc. for a really good explanation of what all the different options mean for automatically making bookmarks from the document structure.

Like how to know what Index1, Normal, etc.---what all these options do.

I find that either it isn't grabbing enough bookmarks (like not really grabbing anything useful)...or grabbing everything (including all the text in each paragraph).

At one point in time, I remember using the create pdf from multiple files, and it did a decent job adding bookmarks to the structure of the word documents (I still had to add some, etc., but it did a pretty good job.

I'm talking about combining a LOT of word documents into the PDF (sometimes around 100), and I know for a fact that there have been easily over 700 bookmarks in the final combined pdf file I made previous to the one I am working on currently---so it would be nice if I didn't have to start nearly from scratch again

Also, tried using the add bookmarks from structure inside Adobe, and gives some success with some of the options (not as good as I had before, though).

The word documents have various fonts indicating the various sections (like the one "header" is a large, bold, underline), next subsections are smaller bold, etc. Note when I say "header" I am not referring to the top portion of a word document, or, in this case, usually a font style either (like heading 1, etc.)

Please help

Thanks in advance

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2008-01-15 06:29:58
#1
carrimak
Team
Registered: Dec 13 2006
Posts: 165
It really only works well if the MS Word "author" structured the document carefully using styles. It isn't enough to just have changed the fonts when they wanted to indicate a different look or style...it's using Word "Styles" the way Word means it.

Suggest that you do some research about Word "Styles" first and then make a small document that uses Word Styles correctly....then try make a PDF from that and see if that one will make good bookmarks.

The problem starts with Word.

Hope this helps....

Acrobat is probably the program I use most often and I'm learning more every day.

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2008-01-15 13:24:11
#2
daka630
Expert
Registered: Mar 1 2007
Posts: 1420
cmount,
As carrimak observed,
Quote:
carefully using styles
is the key.
A suggestion. Copy the default template "normal.dot" to somewhere.
Avoid making style changes & saving them until, via the MS Word Help, you are comfortable with how to make, save, and call up for use a new template (*.dot file). If you play with MS Word styles and save 'em, you alter the default "normal.dot" file.If you must have multiple templates, be sure that same named styles have identical attributes.

For tables - use MS Word's feature for inserting a table. This will get you
access to the progammatically expect table titles and the expected table structure(s) (table heads, rows, columns, etc.).

The goal is to set up the content, in the authoring envirionment, correctly.
Then the conversion to PDF, via Distiller, can do what it is programmed to do.

With hundreds of MS Word files it is a bushel basket of work to normalize them all. Once, done, done forever & the PDFs reflect the quality of the input.hth

Be well...

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