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I have a Word 2003 document that mainly consists of about 125 one- or two-page descriptions of cities that welcome military reunions. Reunion planners use it to help them decide on locations for future reunions. The document has a Table of Contents that shows the page numbers for all the descriptions.

I convert the Word document to a PDF file and distribute it to military reunion planners. They can click on any TOC entry and jump instantly to the description of that city.

But since Adobe Reader doesn’t have a BACK button (at least that I can find), there’s no easy way for them to return to the TOC (from which they then could jump to another city).

How can I give them the ability to return to the TOC with one click?

I envision putting some sort of link to the TOC page in the footer of the document (maybe I could insert it once for the whole document), or maybe at the end of each description (I’d have to insert it on 100+ pages).

It seems as though this should be easy, but I don’t even know how to start.

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Doesn’t hitting the home key get you back to the beginning of the document in your PDF reader?

Jerry

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Yes, but the TOC isn’t on the front page.

I’ve never seen one there, but certainly it could be done if there’s not a better way.

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If you are using W2007/10 to edit the W2003 document, you can use the built-in save as PDF Options to create PDF-style bookmarks that display on the left side of the PDF window. The PDF-style bookmarks are created using headings or Word bookmarks. –The Adobe’s bookmarks pane is much more convenient for online use than TOCs. That’s one reason for the popularity of the navigation pane in W2010.

If you can’t use W2007/10, other software that can create the bookmarks while creating PDFs is available, starting with Adobe Acrobat and Nitro. I don’t know if any of the free converters can make the PDF-style bookmarks.

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My TOC is a single two-column page. You can look at it on your screen, click the city you want, and you’re taken there immediately. The whole thing is very clean and easy, and it works without any panes or controls outside the document itself.

I’m looking for a way to return to the TOC in a similar clean, easy way. I have a feeling that inserting a Hyperlink field might be the way to do it. but I’m not sure about using a Hyperlink to move to a specific place in a document. I’m checking in a Word reference book, but am not quite getting it yet.

Also, I’m not sure that the hyperlink, if that’s the way to go, will convert over to the PDF. I’m using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro to make the PDF, and it seems pretty capable, so I’ve got my fingers crossed.

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I think I’ve got it!

In Word, I inserted a bookmark at the top of the Table of Contents page. When I converted the Word file to a PDF, I set Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 Pro to convert Word bookmarks to PDF bookmarks. I cleared all the other proposed conversions (headings, styles, etc.), since I didn’t want to clutter things up with them.

With PamCaswell’s suggestion about using Adobe Reader’s left pane, readers can now show the pane and see just one bookmark — the one for the TOC. They can instantly return to the TOC by clicking it.

If I want to, I can put a Word hyperlink on every page referenced by the TOC. Then, readers who don’t use the PDF left pane can just click it to go to the TOC.

Once again, merely formulating one’s problem clearly enough to post it here gets one half way to solving it.

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If your users can remember keystroke commands then clicking Alt-Left Arrow will take them back to the location where they clicked the link. This is basically the Back command from a browser that has been adopted by MS Word and Adobe Acrobat for navigating via links.

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Thanks! I just KNEW there must be a keyboard shortcut, but I didn’t know what it was.

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One more quick addition in case you didn’t know this was an option… with Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can set the document to open by default with the Bookmarks open. While the document is open in Adobe Acrobat, choose File > Properties from the menu. Go to the Initial View tab. Set the Navigation Tab field to “Bookmarks Panel and Page” and then click Ok and Save one more time.

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Most excellent! I will do it.

Maybe I’ll include some instructions about quick ways to return to the TOC.

It’s really nice in practice… Click the city’s name in the TOC, read its short writeup, click to go back to the TOC, click another city if you’re interested it, etc. VERY useful for comparing cities.

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