Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs Part 1

Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs Part 1

About page thumbnails

Page thumbnails are miniature previews of the pages in a document. You can use page thumbnails to jump quickly to a selected page or to adjust the view of the page. When you move, copy, or delete a page thumbnail, you move, copy, or delete the corresponding page.

Note

If you don't see page thumbnails in the Pages side panel, select View > Show/Hide > Side panels > Page. 

Create page thumbnails

Page thumbnails increase file size, so Acrobat doesn't create them automatically.

Note

Acrobat no longer supports embedding and unembedding page thumbnails. However, Acrobat Distiller® provides an alternate method of embedding page thumbnails.

View page thumbnails

  1. Select the Page Thumbnails icon   from the right navigation panel.

    Page thumbnails appear in the navigation pane. This process may require several seconds, particularly in larger documents. The drawing of page thumbnails may pause if you interact with the application during this process.

Resize page thumbnails

  1. In the Page Thumbnails side panel, select Options  , and then select Reduce Page Thumbnails or Enlarge Page Thumbnails. Page thumbnails revert to their default size if you close and reopen the PDF.

Define the tab order

In the Page Thumbnails side panel, you can set the order in which a user tabs through form fields, links, and comments for each page.

  1. 1. Open the Page Thumbnails side panel.

  2. 2. Select a page thumbnail, and choose Page Properties from the Options menu  .

  3. 3. In the Page Properties dialog, select Tab Order, and then select the tab order.

    Use Row Order Moves through rows from left to right, or right to left for pages with a right-to-left binding.

    Use Column Order Moves through columns from left to right and from top to bottom, or right to left for pages with a right-to-left binding.

    Use Document Structure Moves in the order specified by the authoring application.

    Note

    For structured documents—PDFs that were created from desktop publishing applications or that contains tags—it’s best to select the Use Document Structure option to match the intention of the authoring application.

    If the document was created in an earlier version of Acrobat, the tab order is Unspecified by default. With this setting, form fields are tabbed through first, followed by links, and then comments ordered by row.

About bookmarks

A bookmark is a link with representative text in the Bookmarks panel in the navigation pane. Each bookmark goes to a different view or page in the document. Bookmarks are generated automatically during PDF creation from the table-of-contents entries of documents created by most desktop publishing programs. These bookmarks are often tagged and can be used to make edits in the PDF.

Initially, a bookmark displays the page in view when the bookmark was created, which is the bookmark’s destination. In Acrobat, you can set bookmark destinations as you create each bookmark. However, it's sometimes easier to create a group of bookmarks and then set the destinations later.

In Acrobat, you can use bookmarks to mark a place in the PDF to which you want to return or to jump to a destination in the PDF, another document, or a web page. Bookmarks can also perform actions like running a command or submitting a form.

Note

An Acrobat user can add bookmarks to a document only if the security settings allow it.

Create a bookmark

  1. 1. Select the bookmarks icon from the right navigation bar to open the Bookmarks side panel. 

  2. 2. Open the page where you want the bookmark to link to, and adjust the view settings.
  3. 3. Use the Select tool to select the area of the page you want to bookmark:

    • To bookmark a single image, click in the image or drag a rectangle around the image.

    • To bookmark a portion of an image, drag a rectangle around the portion.

    • To bookmark text, drag to select it. The selected text becomes the label of the new bookmark. You can edit the label.

  4. 4. Select the bookmark under which you want to place the new bookmark. If you don’t select a bookmark, the new bookmark is automatically added at the end of the list.
  5. 5. From the Options menu   in the Bookmarks panel, select New Bookmark.

  6. 6. In the Bookmarks side panel, type or edit the name of the new bookmark.

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