Searchable Keywords in InDesign export to PDF

[christinay98009360]

Hi, I am working on a rather large product catalog for a client.  He wants to be able to add searchable "keywords" to each individual page of the catalog.  So for example, if a page has a teddy bear with stripes on it, he wants people to be able to search, from the PDF, "stripes" or "bear" or "teddy" and for them to be taken to the page that the striped teddy bear is on.

Is there a way to do this from InDesign and have it export to a PDF?  I'm guessing he's wanting almost a website-like search engine feature but I'm not even sure if this is do-able from InDesign.  

[Joel Cherney]

If I were tasked with this, I'd be thinking about a whole bunch of custom Javascript added after PDF production. I don't believe there is any way to achieve this from within ID. Honestly, while I am not sure which way to set it up in Acrobat, I can think of a few different possible ways to do it. Some examples: make a button in the Acrobat Forms editor with the "Execute a menu item..." action, and/or use a button that would run some JS that featured search.query(), and/or use the Embedded Index feature. 

But no, I'm pretty sure there is no way to do this from within InDesign. I've not used Indy's Forms features very much (b/c they're woefully incomplete compared to what's already in Acrobat!) so I might be wrong about that. 

[BobLevine]

You need a website, not a PDF.

But if you insist on a PDF, no, you cannot do this from InDesign so you might want to pop over to the Acrobat forum and ask there, but please keep in mind that even some of the worst PDF readers have a built-in search function.

[PaoloVeronelli]

Maybe... an 'invisible' text field, near the image, filled (by you, not by any automation) with the keywords.

'Invisible' can be a very small white text on white background (or any color on the same color).

It's a turnaround but you could give it a try.

[Joel Cherney]

This is actually pretty good; it's a little like the Embedded Index, but you get to build it yourself instead of dealing with Acrobat's UI challenges. 

(also I guess I should add that, if I were in your shoes, I would try a somewhat gentler version of Bob's comment before signing up to implement this superfluous PDF interactivity. And then, when my client doubled down on their dreams of in-PDF searching, I'd shrug, and remind myself that their money spends just fine, and also remind myself to implement a dropdown in my PDF invoice that has a "Wheel Reinvention Surcharge".)

[PaoloVeronelli]

Bob is a very wise guy and your 'wheel reinvention surcharge' it's even wiser.