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December 6, 2016
Question

How to link bookmarked text from a PDF into word?

  • December 6, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 1961 views

In Word 2010 I can use a LINK field (from Insert / Quick Parts) to link to the contents of an entire PDF file.  It looks like this when I hit Alt-F9 in Word to toggle field codes, and when I select it and hit F9 to update field codes, the whole PDF comes in as an 8-1/2 x 11 picture, because that's the PDF's paper size

     { LINK AcroExch.Document.11 "C:\\fullpath\\TestPDFsource.pdf" }

But what I really want is to bring in only one piece of text from the PDF.  So with Acrobat I created a bookmark in the PDF by selecting the line of text and using Add Bookmark.  I save and close, open the Word file, and change the LINK field to this:

     { LINK AcroExch.Document.11 "C:\\fullpath\\TestPDFsource.pdf" BOOKMARKED_LINE }

But now all I get is "Error! Invalid link" when I update it with F9.  If I hit Alt-F9 to see the field codes, then remove "BOOKMARKED_LINE", it works.  The bookmark definitely exists on the PDF - both Reader and Acrobat tell me so.

So is it even possible to create some reference to some text in a PDF and pull only that text into Word?

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1 reply

Bernd Alheit
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 7, 2016

You can't link to bookmarks. You can link to named destinations.

December 7, 2016

Thanks, but I have two issues.  I found how to make named destinations, but:

  1. Destinations seem to refer to whole pages rather than a certain block of text.
  2. When I add the name of a destination into the Word file's LINK field I still get the same error.

What I'd line to do is extract just one line of text from anywhere in the body of a PDF.

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 7, 2016

1. No, that's incorrect. A Named Destination points at a specific view setting, ie a specific X,Y location on a specific page number, using a specific zoom level.