BOOKMARKING AND HYPERLINKING

Bookmarking and hyperlinking enhance a digital file's usage ease.

An electronic bookmark is comparable to flags in a physical file. Very often, advocates require their juniors/clerks to flag contents of index in the file to avoid referring to index. Similarly, one may want to flag an important page while reading the file for easy reference. Bookmarking function in PDF is the electronic version of such flagging.

In Hyperlinking, clicking/touching a specific part of page readily takes you to a target location. If you hyperlink the page number column in index with respective pages, clicking on the hyperlinked area will instantly take you to the target page.

In terms of index contents, bookmarking and hyperlinking perform the same function, which is to instantly take you to a specific section. However, please note that bookmarking and hyperlinking have other usages apart from denoting index contents of a file.

WHY TO BOOK-MARK AND HYPERLINK

• To instantly open any specific page or section

• For ease in cross reference.

HOW TO BOOK-MARK AND HYPERLINK

All PDF editing software have tools for bookmarking. In Adobe Acrobat DC, you can add bookmarks under the bookmark section on the left side. Hyperlinks can be added in the links section in tools.

Please note that for faster process, in documents with running page numbering, you should always page-label the document first, followed by book-marking and then hyperlinking.

As the landing page should be opened first to create a bookmark, if your document is already page labelled, you can instantly go to a specific page and create the bookmark.

If you attempt to bookmark without page-labelling, you will be constrained to scroll endlessly to reach each landing page, making the whole process time consuming.

The following is a step-by-step guide to bookmark your file with running page number.

Step 1: Only print the index.

Step 2: Go to first page of each index section. As your file is already pagelabelled, you can go to the exact page using the ‘go to page’ function.

Step 3: Add a bookmark and name your bookmark. The short-cut to bookmark a page is to open the target page and type Ctrl+B (⌘ + B if you are a Apple user).

The following video demonstrates bookmarking in Adobe Acrobat DC:

In hyperlinking, you essentially need to select an area on a page and denote a destination page if one clicks on that area. In Adobe Acrobat DC, you can hyperlinking under 'links' in tools.

Step 1: Open index

Step 2: Mark specific area in the index which you want to hyperlink for each row. I generally only hyperlink the page number area in the index to respective section. You can hyperlink the entire index row of respective section as well.

Once you finish marking. A new window pops up. 

Step 3: Choose a style in which your bookmark appears. You can denote a standard style whenever your hyperlink so that you need not select a separate style for each hyperlink. 

Then click ‘Next’.

Step 4: Open the first page of the respective section and ’set link’. As you already bookmarked your file, you can instantly go the such page using bookmarks.

The following video demonstrates hyperlinking in Adobe Acrobat DC:

ARE BOOKMARKING AND HYPERLINKING COMPULSORY?

I have already dealt with various kinds of files and the options available in performing CPBH, including bookmarking and hyperlinking.

In pages with running page numbering, bookmarking only the index page is compulsory. However, bookmarking and hyperlinking all index contents is optional.