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its_01100001
Participating Frequently
February 13, 2018
Question

PDF page labels created in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC breaks bookmark behavior in Apple Preview

  • February 13, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 5667 views

Context

The first 8 pages of my scanned book are Cover, blank, Title, Copyright, ..., and Table of Contents pages. Then start the pages with the actual pagination printed at the bottom (1, 2, 3,...).

So in order to get the page numbers aligned, I set the page labels of the first 8 pages to roman numerals i to viii. Then the rest of the pages automatically start from 1.

I especially do this because creating bookmarks to the ton of chapters in the book is easier this way (as the page numbers are aligned, I can simply follow the information in the Table of Contents page to quickly create bookmarks).

FYI, this is how I renumber the pages: http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=2415896&seqNum=4

Problem

Once I export the PDF (with re-organized pages & bookmarks), as I am on Mac, I use the default tool to view my PDF documents, i.e. Apple Preview.

Problem is, for PDFs with re-numbered/re-organized pages, when I click the bookmarks Preview takes me half-way to the relevant page. As in, this:

(Part of) Table of Contents* page being shown when its respective bookmark is clicked.

This happens sometimes with PDFs with untouched page organization (i.e. no custom page labels defined), and never with PDF ebooks that I purchased, ever!

So I am pretty sure something can be done to fix this in my PDF. I just don't know what setting in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC can help me fix this. What am I missing?

NOTE: For those interested, I made a sample PDF (temporarily) available here.

Generally Suggested Fix

Go to Preview > Preferences > PDF (tab) > check "Use logical page numbers". But that's already checked in my case and the problem persists.

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Brad @ Roaring Mouse
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 2, 2022

Edit

Dov Isaacs
Legend
February 13, 2018

What you are missing here is that Apple's Preview application is not a standards-compliant PDF viewer. There are quite a few PDF features that Preview can't handle fully or at all.

Have you contacted Apple and asked them to fix Preview?

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
its_01100001
Participating Frequently
February 13, 2018

Hello Dov,

What you are missing here is that Apple's Preview application is not a standards-compliant PDF viewer.

Maybe, but that's not the point. Reason being, as I've stated earlier, many PDFs that I downloaded/purchased (multiple PDFs from different sources & publishers), ones that also use page labels, work just fine in Apple Preview. So what I don't understand is, why is the PDF that I am exporting using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC having issues?

Preview is still one of the best PDF viewers on macOS be it in functionality or UI, which is why I am concerned.

If there is any setting in Acrobat Pro DC that I could try to fix this, I'd love to try that.

Have you contacted Apple and asked them to fix Preview?

As I haven't narrowed down the issue, I can't. (Besides, what am I going to tell them? That all other PDFs open just fine, and only mine doesn't? )

~graffiti
Legend
February 13, 2018

[Moved to Acrobat forum since the free Reader doesn't seem to be involved here]