Linking to within a PDF using named destinations

Hi everybody,

the point with the Print Field Gloria mentioned sounds very interesting. But I want to add destination names in an automatic way, when the word document is transformed into the pdf file.
I need the headlines and section names to be transformed into destination names. Currently that works good for the creation of bookmarks, but I want to address these headlines using an URL like: testDoc.pdf#Headline1

Does anybody has an idea how that could be realised?

thx,
Matthias

Has anybody solved the issue of named destinations 'sticking'? I am working on an internal web application with help links that open up a PDF file in a separate browser window. Each page of the application links to a different named destination within the PDF. The named destinations work perfectly the first time the user clicks on the help link. The problem we are having is if the user scrolls the PDF, then closes the help popup, and then clicks the same help link again, the PDF will popup to the last position the user was looking at.

We have found that if the user clicks on a different help link (different named dest) and then goes back to the first one, the first one will then open up at the right spot.

I am assuming this is some kind of browser caching issue. I have recreated it in both IE6 and Firefox2.

Does anybody have any solutions?

Just solved this issue for my wife's company. The problem with her files was that there were extra spaces at the end of the destination names. I just deleted these extra spaces within the Destinations section of the PDF and they appear to be working now.

Pantagrool

Graham,
You can include a PRINT field in Word that will instruct Acrobat to create the named destination when the file is PDF'ed. You can include these PRINT fields for any point in the file where you want a named destination. The PRINT field is in this form:

{PRINT "[ /Dest /MyDest /DEST pdfmark"}

where "MyDest" is the destination name you want.

This code is pdfmark, which is a PostScript-language extension that describes features that are present in PDF, but not in standard PostScript. It is a language that the Acrobat Distiller understands and will correctly render when it creates a PDF file.

To work with PRINT fields in Word, you must have the option "Show field codes instead of their values" selected. (I find it helpful to have field shading turned on, too.) Note that you can insert one PRINT field, then copy/paste it at other destinations and change the destination name accordingly. Also, the default for inserting a PRINT field is to have the option "Preserve formatting during updates" selected. This option yields "\* MERGEFORMAT" at the end of your printing instructions in the field. If that bugs you, do not select that option when you insert the field.

Hope this helps! --GMc

Is it possible to use both a nameddest and a search term? specifically I want to be able to have a link point to the nameddest and from there start the search term highlighting..
the syntax i'm using is #nameddest=heading&search=term
it works but it seems to goto the nameddest then the search starts from the top, so if the term is found higher up, it doesn't work right, -any ideas?

You can only create a named destination an Acrobat. But you can creat links to document strtuctures within Word.

How do I create a named destination in Word?

Richard

To define the named destinations at the correct place you first need to set the page layout to 'single page', 'continuous' works for displaying but not for defining.

Then you resize the height of the window displaying your pdf inside Acrobat (not the Acrobat main window) so that it can display the place near the bottom of the page where you want the destination to be without jumping to the next page.

Make sure you didn't scroll to that view, but navigated there via keyboard keys or scroll bar. Otherwise Acrobat won't catch the right position. If you did scroll there, click into the page once.

Now create a named destination and link to it. The link should now point to the correct position in continuous page layout, too.

Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem entirely, since text positioning and scroll raster don't allow for exactly the same distance from the top of the window to a given text. You can work around this too by toying with the window size, but that is a very annoying task.

Stefan

Gloria

Thanks for the reply. I was creating the destinations and hyperlinks in Acrobat. As you explain in the second to last para the problem is that the page number jumps to the next page when the view is about 3/4 of the way down the previous page. This is a bug. I have worked around it as you describe but this does mean the hyperlink jumps to different positions on different pages - an annoying inconsistency.

Richard

Richard,
How are you creating the the TOC and the destinations (in which program - Frame, Word, Acrobat, or ?) Also, which versions of Acrobat Professional (8.1.1?), etc. do you have?

Acrobat has historically had problems in this area, whether the links are bookmarks (in the bookmark pane), in the text going to a page, or linking to a destination. It has to do with the zoom (page display will obviously show the page), the page display (must be continuous), and how the link is defined. Bad news is that I've never figured it out myself.

One thing I've discovered is that acc. to Acrobat Help, links to destinations should be defined as Go To A Page View action, not Execute a Menu Item action. (Acrobat says the Go To A Page View action "Jumps to the specified destination in the current document or in another document.") However, even if I modify the Action for a link, it remains Execute a Menu Item (which is Go to page, the key word being "page"). A bug? (Or something I'm not doing correctly?)

Another thing I've noticed is that Acrobat is not good at identifying pages when you are scrolling near the bottom. You can see this yourself if you scroll near the bottom of a page, that the page number jumps to the next page number when approximately 25% of the prev. page is visible (if zoom is 100%, anyway). Thus, to set a destination for a heading low on a page, you can only scroll to the point before the page number jumps. Hope that makes sense.

Sorry I don't have a solution for you. Hope that someone else who has figured this out will speak up.

--GMc