Linking to a bookmark in a PDF File

[CRO1]

Hello All,

In our Web project, we have a .PDF which opens when the user clicks on the appropriate link. Is it possible to modify the link so the PDF opens at a specific location. For other purposes, we have inserted bookmarks in the PDF using Adobe 7.0 Professional.

I suspect, although not sure, we could have the RoboHelp link point to a Redirect topic. However, I am not sure if we could insert a Shortcut control and have it function in a Web Help format. If not, what other alternatives are available. If a Shortcut control is possible how do I identify the PDF bookmark in the Program Parameters.

Cheers,
CRO

[RoboWizard]

Hi CRO

Perhaps the link below will help?

Click here to read

Hope so... Rick 🙂

[CRO1]

Rick,

Regretably the link does provided any information. Also, the link within the article is no longer active. We know the key to the solution is Named Destination is the key within Adobe. So, how does one link from the Web Help topic to the Named Destination with the .PDF file?

[Peter Grainge]

Try throwing "Linking from Web to PDF bookmark" into Google. Seems to return plenty of other topics which might help. Obviously ignore the first two!

[Clestwedna]

I tried the Google search and a lot of other things. No complete success, but . . .

RoboHelp for Word will reliably generate a link to a pdf file that opens the file at the top (ditto Robohelp for HTML). I.e., the source .doc has

mytext!JumpHtml('C:/aFile.pdf')

in it. Then if you create a WebHelp file, the .htm file has

<a href="C:/aFile.pdf">mytext</a>

in it. It works. However, Robohelp does not seem to offer the ability to specify a nameddest, i.e., a defined place anywhere in the .pdf. You can type a nameddest into the souce .doc, i.e.,

selText!JumpHtml('C:/aFile.pdf#nameddest=sheep')

but then the WebHelp .htm has no corresponding href in it at all. (But it works for WinHelp output, see below.) If you don't put the nameddest in the source .doc, and instead yourself insert it into the output WebHelp .htm, i.e.:

<a href="C:/aFile.pdf#nameddest=sheep">selText</a>

then naturally it works. The runtime hotlink jumps to the desired place inside the .pdf. So, there's one way to do it. However, having to hand enter the link in the .htm is suboptimal - RoboHelp *should* automate it.

One wrinkle is, if you hand enter the nameddest in the source .doc, and then generate a WinHelp output (instead of WebHelp), that seems to work as desired, provided you include the .pdf in the baggage files and enable the special included .dll. So there's a WinHelp solution that at least lets you enter the nameddest in the source file, but it doesn't work for WebHelp. That difference makes me think I'm missing some setup parameter.

[Clestwedna]

A clarification: according to my recent browsing, pdf bookmarks are not like Word bookmarks, in that you don't jump to them, they jump somewhere. So you can't easily link "to" a pdf bookmark. Pdf Destinations are what you can link to - they're like bookmarks in Word. Hence the "#nameddest"(ination) stuff in href linking. But you can't do a #nameddest jump to a pdf bookmark, only to a pdf named destination that has been specified in the target pdf file.

Probably there's some dll somewhere that will allow transparent linking to the target of a pdf bookmark, but I haven't stumbled onto it so far.

[CRO1]

Thanks to all responded. The information is quite helpful.

Regards,
CRO