PDF Bookmark & Table of Contents Editor

About the PDF Bookmark & Table of Contents Editor

A PDF’s bookmarks are the entries in a reader’s navigation panel: the document’s outline. This editor shows the outline your file already has — titles, the page each one opens and how they nest — and lets you add, rename, nest, reorder and delete entries, point any entry at another page, and build a whole outline in one go from the document’s headings (lines in a larger font) or from patterns such as “Chapter 1” or numbered headings.

You can also set page labels: the page numbers a reader prints in its page box, so front matter reads i, ii, iii while the body reads 1, 2, 3 — and make the file open with its bookmarks panel showing. The outline can be written out as indented text and read back in, which is the quickest way to build a long table of contents. The pages themselves are never rewritten: text, pictures, links and form fields stay exactly as they are, and nothing is uploaded.

Common uses

• Giving a scanned or exported PDF the navigation panel it never had.
• Fixing an outline whose entries point at the wrong pages after pages were added or removed.
• Building a table of contents for a long report, contract or thesis from its headings.
• Numbering front matter i, ii, iii so a reader’s page box matches the printed page numbers.
• Making a handbook open with its bookmarks panel, so readers see the structure first.

What bookmarks and page labels are

Bookmarks are the document outline of ISO 32000-1:2008, Document management — Portable document format — Part 1: PDF 1.7, §12.3.3: a tree of items, each with a title, a destination and an open or closed state. This tool writes every item with an explicit destination to a page object, which is the form every reader understands: a bookmark keeps the exact position and zoom the file gave it as long as it still opens the same page, a bookmark you point at another page opens it fitted in the window, and a bookmark found from a heading opens the page at that heading. Bookmarks that open a web address keep it, and the title colour and the bold or italic flags a file already used stay as they were.

Page labels are §12.4.2 of the same standard: ranges of pages, each with a numbering style (decimal, roman capitals or lower case, letters), an optional prefix and a start number. They change only what a reader prints in its page box — never the numbers printed on the pages themselves.

“Open with the bookmarks panel showing” is the catalogue’s page mode (/PageMode /UseOutlines). Adobe Acrobat Reader, Firefox and most mobile readers follow it; some viewers ignore it.

How headings are found

• A larger font than the body text — the size most characters are drawn in is taken as the body size; every distinct larger size becomes a level, biggest first. Lines that repeat on at least 30 % of the pages, and on three pages or more (running headers and footers), are left out.
• Chapter, Section, Part, Annex, Appendix, Article, Schedule — lines that start with one of those words; sections nest under chapters.
• Numbered headings — 1, 1.2, 1.2.3 … followed by a title that starts with a capital, at the body size or larger (so footnotes and sentences that begin with a number are left out): the depth of the number becomes the level.
• CAPITAL LETTERS — short lines written entirely in capitals, as in many contracts.
• My own words — lines that start with the text you type.

A PDF that holds no text (a scan without OCR) has nothing to find: run OCR PDF first, or type the outline. Headings are only a starting point — check the list and fix what the file got wrong.

The outline as text

The text form is two spaces (or one tab) per level, then the title, then a tab and the page number:

Introduction 1 Why this matters 2 Method 8

Reading it back accepts a tab, two or more spaces, or “ — 12” before the page number, so a list copied out of a word processor usually works. A line without a page becomes a heading that only groups the entries under it. Writing the list out as that text, copying it and downloading it are part of the result, so they follow the same lock as the PDF until you unlock it; text you type or paste into the box is your own and reads into the list at any time.

Limitations

• A password-protected or encrypted PDF cannot be changed here. Remove the protection with Unlock PDF first.
• Saving changes the file, so any digital signature in it will show as invalid — keep the original if you need it.
• A bookmark that opened another file or ran an action other than opening a web address (a script, a menu command) becomes a plain heading without a target. Named destinations are turned into direct page destinations with the same position.
• At most 5,000 bookmarks and 10 levels.
• Headings are found in the first 500 pages of the text layer; a scan without OCR has no text to search.
• Page labels change what a reader shows, not the numbers printed on the pages. Use Add Page Numbers to print numbers on the pages.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.