New hyperlink button grayed

InDesign CS 4.

I am working on a large book with 20 chapters including front matters and index.  I am trying to add hyperlinks to pages from the index and TOC (manual). TOC is a part of the front matter indd. I can link pages in all chapters from the index, no problem. However, when trying to add links to pages from the front matters indd, I can do that to the pages within frontmatters.indd, but NOT to any other chapter in the book. The new hyperlink button at the bottom of the links panel is grayed  if a page selected is outside frontmatters.indd. So there is something different about frontmatters.indd as index.indd behaves as expected. I open all chapters from the indb.

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