How to create folders to store/group related bookmarks in a PDF?

Report · Mar 04, 2022

I've been trying to organize a muti-thousand page PDF with hundreds and hundreds of bookmarks someone else created then dumped on me. Have posted a few questions. Here's another.

The PDF already has some bookmarks "grouped"; i.e, there is a right pointing arrow to the left of a bookmark, and then bookmarks below that first one that are indented. When I click the arrow, the lower bookmards are hidden. So, USA might be the top bookmark, and under it Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and the rest of the states, then another bookmark called Canada, below which are bookmarks for each Canadian Provice. So I can expand or collapse USA, Canada, etc to see or hide their states, provinces, etc.

I can't find anythign in Adobe that tells me how to do this. Can someone please explain? Very much appreciate your help.

Thanks!

Report · Mar 07, 2022

You can drag and drop bookmarks to rearrange them. When you get ready to drop a bookmark, it will indicate where it will be placed, and that gives you an indication about if it's being palced as a child element or a sibling of the preceding element. It takes a bit of practice to know exactly where you need to drop it to get the desired result. I would practice with a sampe document that just has a handful of bookmarks until you feel comfortable doing this with a larger document. Regardless of what you do, save your work often. You don't want to have to redo things just because something happened with your computer or with Acrobat.

Report · Mar 07, 2022

Hi Karl, thanks for info. I'm was primarily trying to figure out how to "group" related bookmarks together so I could hide or expand them as needed (since my document has hundreds of bookmarks).

Afte I posted my question, I realized/discovered that I can click and drag a bookmark so it is under another bookmark and indented. Then Pro shows a arrow to the left of the upper bookmark. When I click on that arrow, the idented bookmark(s) below are hidden.

But it is sometimes hard to drag a bookmark(s) over so they are indented. Is there a way to do that using the bookmark menu instead?

Thanks!

Report · Mar 07, 2022

This can be a notoriously tedious task, as the mouse /pointer position must be extremely precise. For me, the trick is to really watch the screen. When indention, drag the bookmarks and watch for the insertion point to be visible before releasing the mouse button. Also, take advantage of the ability to select multiple bookmarks at once when moving/indenting.

Dave

Report · Mar 07, 2022

Unfortunately, you have to use the mouse. As I said, there is a learning curve. The key is to recognize what the software is trying to tell you.

As Dave suggested, take advantage of dragging multiples in one operation. I also collect my bookmarks sometimes in a more convenient location in the tree and then move several at once.

There are 3rd party applications that can make it easier to manage bookmarks, but I have not used any of them in probably ten years.

Report · Mar 07, 2022

The most annoying thing that's preventing using the keyboard to re-organize the bookmark tree is that you can't paste a bookmark as the first sub-child of another bookmark.

If you stand on another bookmark and press Ctrl+V and pastes the one you copied or cut as the next sibling of the selected one, even if it has children, and even if you open it. The only way to do it is to go down to one of those children, and then paste it after it, but then you still have to use the mouse to move it up the list... Such bad UI design.

Report · Oct 21, 2022

Its a nightmare. I inheriteed a multi thousand pg PDF with thousands of bookmarks. It covers 2019, 2020 & 2021. But the prior guy stuck docs for 2020 with a folder for aanother year.

Acrobat has become so frustratig to use since Adobe replaced the old version of Pro with DC.

Report · Oct 21, 2022

If they can be identified by their name (for example, if they contain a date or start with specific text) it should be possible to use a script to move them all under a specific (sub-)bookmark. Otherwise, you can do it manually, as described above.

Report · Oct 21, 2022

Thanks. But what I discovered (Adobe doesn't tell us) is you cannot drag a nested folder to the left to remove it from another folder. But you can drag it up to above the folder its nested in. Enormous Pain in the A if the folder contains thousands of pages, because you have to keep pressing the mouse button, but it worked for me.

Really wish Adobe would give up on DC and let us go back to the pre DC version. Everything, and I mean everything is so much harder in DC. Just an awlful product.

Report · Oct 21, 2022

I had a copy of Acrobat 9 on my system as long as I could. It won't run on any recent version of macOS anymore.