Bookmarks - Two things that drive me crazy!!

Report · Jun 02, 2021

Bookmarks are an amazing feature of PDF files, but there are two things that drive me crazy with them (and I use them ALOT) so if anyone has any useful workarounds that they can share, I would appreciate it.

I'm a Specification Writer in the Architectural field, so I edit documents in MS Word, print to PDF and combine in Acrobat. It is not uncommon that the volumes I create are 120 or more files combineed into 1. I also love that Acrobat creates a bookmark for the first page of each file that is combined HOWEVER (and this is what drives me crazy) it automatically sets the zoom level of the bookmark to "Page Width". Have set the default level of bookmarks to Fit Page, but amazingly this seems to only apply to bookmarks that the user creates manually! Really Adobe? Give me a break!! Of all of the other preferences you can set (of course finding a perference is another story and 90% of which I don't have a use for) surely something like this could be added as there seem to be other comments about this. There must be an easier way than going in to every bookmark and manually editing the zoom level?!?!?!?!?!?!

The second thing is when adding a blank page into a PDF file, Acrobat automatically generates a bookmark called "Blank Page" and again, there is no Preference setting I can find to turn this off. It's beyond my comprehension who would ever want a bookmark called "Blank Page" in their document or what possible use this would ever have. Again, really Adobe?? I actually asked a support rep about this and they couldn't tell me how to stop this from happening either.

Rant done.

Report · Jun 02, 2021

1. I believe Acrobat DC has an option to batch edit the zoom level of multiple bookmarks.

If not (or if you have an older version) you can do it using a stand-alone tool, like this (paid-for) one I've developed:

https://www.try67.com/tool/batch-edit-zoom-level-in-bookmarks

2. This can be avoided if you add the new page using a script.

Report · Jun 05, 2025

I definitely agree to both of these points. NOBODY has ever wanted a bookmark for every blank page in the document. That behaviour should simply be removed from Acrobat. It makes no sense, and is just extra steps, and there are SO many PDFs circulating with a bunch of "blank page" bookmarks...

Having to make scripts to just add blank pages to a PDF more efficiently really should not be required.