How to highlight bookmarks?

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cartravel
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How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by cartravel »

i have a technical document written in Word. I use lots of bookmarks for equations, figures, etc., which get carried over when I save the document as a PDF. These are nice to help navigate through the document. Unfortunately, they look just like other text, so the reader has no idea they are there. I want to make them a different color or highlight them somehow. Is there an easy way to do this? If so, how? I thought I would find this as a FAQ, but was unable to find it.
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Radi - Tracker Supp
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Re: How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by Radi - Tracker Supp »

Hello cartravel,

Normally, you should be able to highlight your document using the Highlight tool. However, this tool highlights text only - to find out how to highlight other objects in your document, please take a look at the following knowledge base articles:
How do I place freehand highlights
How do I highlight things on a document that contains only images

Regards,
Radi
cartravel
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Re: How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by cartravel »

Here is an example of a document with similar highlighted bookmarks. It would be called a link if it were in html.
https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/wxg/Gatteschi.pdf
You will notice that the numbered references and equations are highlighted in blue and if you click on them you go to that spot in the document. I've already got the bookmarks from Word, but they are not highlighted. I just want to highlight them. I see this sort of thing all the time. That is why I thought it would be a FAQ. Also, I do not really want to go through and manually change the color to 1,000 or so of these. If I did, then next time I modify the document in Word, I'd have to do it all over again. If this cannot be done easily in Xchange, then perhaps I can do it in Word. Thanks.
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello cartravel ,

Bookmarks in a PDF file are a very specific type of object - and those are shown in a special bookmarks pane - and are generally not visible in the document body. I presume you refer to the objects above e.g. 57 and 59 on the below image?
bookmarks_vs_links.png
The bookmarks are the tree structure on the left, and those numbers inside the actual page have links on top of them.
If you want to change many bookmarks or links it can be done with JS, and if you need to create/modify links one at a time - you can do is using the "Create Link" tool in the Editor. When that tool is selected - you will see all existing links and can click on them to edit them, or if you draw a rectangle on the page - it will create a new link for you there that you can then assign actions to.

Regards,
Stefan
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Hello everyone,

What is called "bookmarks" in Microsoft Word, is not exactly the same as what is called "bookmarks" in a PDF.

A bookmark in Word is a kind of label that has been given to a particular piece of text somewhere in the document.

By inserting a "hyperlink" in Word, you can choose to create a link to an external document, file or web site, but also to a place somewhere in the document (be it a "heading" or in this case a "bookmark").

Hyperlinks in Word have their own "style". By default it is "blue" and "underlined".

So, what cartravel has to do in Microsoft Word (2010), is change the "Hyperlink"-style to something what he likes, by:
- opening the Styles pane in Word (in the Home-tab, in the group Styles, click on the tiny arrow located at the bottom right of the that Styles group)
- look in the styles list for the Hyperlink style
- mouse over that style, you will see a rectangle coming up with a tiny arrow at the right
- click on that little arrow at the right of the Hyperlink style
- click Modify...
- in the Modify Style dialog box, click on the Format... button (located at the bottom left)
- via Format > Font, you can change the font attributes
- via Format > Border, you can change the border, but also the "Shading" > Fill Color (this will be your "highlight color")

I hope this detailed explanation will help.

Best regards.

N.B.: Only thing at the end is re-convert to a PDF via the PDF-XChange tab in Word.
cartravel
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Re: How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by cartravel »

I was afraid the term "bookmark" might be causing some confusion. I just got this copy of Xchange and am not familiar with their terminology for bookmark. I would call them links or hyperlinks, but Word calls them bookmarks. From Willy's post, it sounds like I can do this on the Word side, using styles, so I will give that a shot. Thanks.
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Will - Tracker Supp
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Re: How to highlight bookmarks?

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Thanks Willy, appreciated as always!

One final note/suggestion - it may not be quite as simple as editing in Word, but you can place the highlights with a JavaScript. One way to do this would be to iterate through the pages of the document and look for link objects, then place a highlight annotation, or rectangle 'highlight' (rectangle annotation with a fill and the blend mode set to 'multiply'), over the spot where the link is. That's not a particularly easy script to write, but the benefit is that once the script has been written you can add it as a button to the toolbar and just press that to process the whole document with a single button click. i.e. investing time in the script would make the processing of subsequent documents far quicker and easier.

Cheers,
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Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
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