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I am creating a catalog in InDesign and I am using the “book” feature because I have different files to create my catalog all into one.
I am trying to create bookmarks, so that when I PDF the book, they will show up in Acrobat. My problem is that you can only bookmark each file separately and not as a whole book. I want my bookmarks to be for the whole book and to be in alphabetical order.
IS IT POSSIBLE to determine the order to put the bookmarks in?
As long as you have paragraph styles applied to all of the items in your catalog you want bookmarked, this is super easy by using Table of Contents (I am using InDesign CC, but I think these features have been around for quite a while).
When InDesign builds a TOC, it takes all of the text that is formatted with your chosen Paragraph Style(s), and adds them to the TOC with their page numbers. I recommend choosing only whatever Paragraph Style(s) contain your product names, and not any Paragraph Styles that are used for lengthy descriptions, pricing, etc.
First, create a new document which will act as your Table of Contents (TOC). Add that new document to your book file, and sync it with the book so that it picks up all of the Paragraph Styles from your master style document. Within your TOC document, click Layout > Table of Contents. Be sure to click the More Options button on the box that pops up so that it looks similar to this:
Add all Paragraph Styles that are formatting information you want bookmarked by selecting it from the Other Styles pane, and clicking the << Add button.
Make sure there are check marks next to Sort Entries in Alphabetical Order, Create PDF Bookmarks, and Include Book Documents, then click OK. Click/drag a box to create an area for this content.
Now, from the Book Pallette menu, click Export Book to PDF, and in the Export Adobe PDF window, make sure that on the General pane, in the Include section, you have Bookmarks and Hyperlinks checked, like this:
Then just click Export. I think you need the actual TOC pages included during the export in order to generate the bookmarks, but after the PDF is created you can just delete those pages if you prefer to have bookmarks only and no actual pages with that information.
If you ever change the content, just re-open the TOC document, and click Layout > Update Table of Contents.
