No clickable Table of Contents in an Pages export to PDF

Hi PVG,

However, when I export a document to PDF

This may work. Try Printing to PDF from Pages.

Menu > File > Print, and bottom left of the Print dialogue is a button PDF. Click on this and choose Save as PDF, then choose a location.

I hope this works. I am using Pages '09 version 4.3 on a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8.4

Regards,

Ian.

Hi PVG,

The proof.

Here is a screen shot of a PDF Printed from Pages as explained above. Opened in Preview.

I clicked on 'see more here' and Preview took me to this Bookmark:

Regards,

Ian.

Hi PVG,

I now see your problem. Hyperlinks and Bookmarks do not work in a Table of Contents because that behaves as a single object and is not editable.

Here is a TOC for a four-page document. TOC is on Page 1. Chapters 1, 2, 3 are on pages 2, 3, 4 (separated by Section Breaks).

Non-editable. But double click in the TOC:

Then Copy. Paste into TextEdit. That will paste plain text. Copy, then Paste back into Pages (page numbers are now static).

Format the font and tab settings. Then create Hyperlinks from the new, editable TOC to the Chapter titles:

Clunky? Yes, but it works. Next challenge is to get rid of the ugly underlines and make a pretty TOC.

Regards,

Ian.

Hi Paul,

I got an email notification before your reply appeared in this discussion. Synching is out of step. Thanks for your reply.

Paul wrote: THe problem isIt is that the bookmarks (from which, I assume, the table of contents is constructed) are not shown in the Navigation pane to the left of the document pane.

I am flying by the seat of my pants because of the poor synch - a bit like a time warp.

The Table of contents is constructed from those paragraph styles that the user has nominated as TOC styles.

Click on Inspector > Document > TOC to see those styles. The TOC is not constructed from Hyperlinks or Bookmarks.

Try Menu > View > Show Styles Draw.

Maybe the solution is to apply Hyperlinks and Bookmarks (in Pages) to nominated TOC paragraph styles before creating a TOC?

Let's hope the Pages gurus in this forum will eventually synch with us.

Regards,

Ian

Hi Paul,

Just noticed another comment from you:

Whoops, can't seem to upload an image.

The camera icon needs a wake-up call at least once in any session. Try once, close the camera dialogue, then try again.

Regards,

Ian.

Hi Paul,

The left column shows page thumbnails. Here is what they look like in Preview app.

Hyperlinks exist in the Table of Contents. They link to bookmarks within the document. I guess that is what you want to export from Pages to PDF.

Ah well, if Word is the tool for the job, that is quicker than messing around with Pages. Would be nice to know if there is a way...

Regards,

Ian.

It must something that has stopped working on Mountain Lion. On my computer with Snow Leopard and Pages 09 the TOC is clickable after Export to PDF. It is even better than in PAges as in Pages you can only click on the number but on the PDF in Preview you can click on the heading too.

Hi fruhulda,

Thank you for your encouragement. I had given up.

Here is a screen shot of a Pages document TOC:

View > Show Invisibles is on. The blue horizontal line is a Section Break to separate the TOC from Chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Exported to PDF (File > Print > PDF > Save as PDF > Save)

This is a screen shot of the PDF TOC in Preview.app

Clicking on either Chapter 1 or the page number (2) takes me to this:

Clicking on either Chapter 2 or the page number (3) takes me to this:

Clicking on either Chapter 3 or the page number (4) takes me to this:

@ Paul,

fruhulda has come to the rescue.

Use Preview.app instead of Skim to open your exported PDF.

In Pages, use the Styles Drawer to assign paragraph Styles to those paragraphs that you want to be included in your TOC (Menu > View > Show Styles Drawer).

Make sure that your Chapter headings are a paragraph Style that is included (ticked) in Inspector > Document > TOC.

Regards,

Ian.

I checked in a version of Skim and my pdf from Pages worked well for the TOC there too. It might be that the OP hasn't created a TOC on styled headings.

This is a glaring omission, but I'd bet it's a licensing issue with Adobe for this functionality.
After spending all day making a beautiful ebook in Pages, I was bitterly disappointed to find that the TOC didn't work, and bookmarks were out of the question.

But I did find out that adding both was relatively easy in old Acrobat Pro CS3. It's even possible to control the zoom level of arrival!

Add bookmark: select text and hit command-B

Control zoom of bookmark: select it, click command-I, hit the actions tab, and "edit."

Adding links to the TOC was a matter of going into Advanced/Links and using the link tool. Set location and zoom level before hitting the last "Set Link" button.

I'm very disappointed that this feature is missing from Pages. Pages makes much more beautiful documents but MS Word makes much more functional documents.

In both MS Word and Google Docs, using the header styles and making a dynamic TOC makes working links when exporting to PDF. In pages you can't make document bookmarks. You can't hyperlink to bookmarks, document sections or heading styles either. I use Pages to write all of my assignments, reports and case studies. Having functional TOC's in these is important, currently I add these after export in Adobe Acrobat (now DC).

I hear what Jon Burris saying about licensing, however the linking functionality isn't even in pages to start with. If it was a problem with Adobe or exporting to PDF, why omit this functionality from pages and Preview? If Microsoft and Google can pay to use this function, why not Apple, surely they have more than enough money?

I would really like to see this feature added in a future update, especially as it's such a near-basic function of a word processor.