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harleygnuya
Known Participant
February 12, 2025
Question

Set PDF file so that is opens without showing the bookmarks panel.

  • February 12, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 2307 views

I'm using Acrobat Pro 2024.005.20399.

 

Despite having set Document Properties > Initial View > Navigation Tab to "Page Only", my PDFs are still showing the bookmarks panel when they open.  I want them to open with the Bookmarks Panel hidden. 

 

Theses PDFs consist of a single page and have no bookmarks in them.

 

To make them come up without the Bookmarks Panel showing, I've had to add an Action to the page:

Select Trigger = "Page Open"

Select Action = "Execute a menu item"

And the menu item I've selected is "Acrobat Menu>View>Show/Hide>Side panels>Bookmarks

 

When I do these things, the pdfs finally come up without the Bookmarks Panel showing.

 

So, I can get it to work, but I thought that merely setting the Navigation Tab to "Page Only" would be sufficient to work on its own.

 

What's going on?  Am I misunderstanding something?

 

I'm attaching screen shots of my document and page settings.

2 replies

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2025

It should be enough, yes. Where (in which application and OS) did you test it when it showed up incorrectly?

harleygnuya
Known Participant
February 12, 2025

Acrobat Pro 2024.005.20399

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit Build 19045.4291

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 13, 2025

v00.03.00 is with just the Navigation tab = "Page Only".

v00.03.02 is with Page Open Action to toggle the Bookmarks.

 

I should add that since I last replied, I've tested both of these files on my laptop, on which I'm running

 

Adobe Acrobat Reader Continuous Release | Version 2024.005.20399 64 bit

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit Build 19045.5371

 

On the laptop, both files open as I would expect, .00 opens without the Bookmarks and .02 opens with them; whereas on my PC, it's the opposite.

 

Could it be that I have an Acrobat Pro preference set somewhere on my PC that is causing it to open PDFs with the bookmarks showing, regardless what the setting of Navigation tab is?


I tried both file in both Acrobat and Reader (latest versions of both, on Windows 10), and in both cases the 00 file showed without the Bookmarks pane, and the 02 file showed with it...

If you want to make sure the Bookmarks pane is closed I don't recommend using the command you used (which toggles the Bookmarks panel, instead of showing/hiding it explictly),  but this script:

this.pane = "N";

Also, you should place it as a doc-level script, instead of under one of the pages.

harleygnuya
Known Participant
February 12, 2025

Oops!  I attached the wrong page properties screenshot.  Here's the right one.