AutoBookmark™ Plug-in for Adobe® Acrobat® / Create and Manage PDF Bookmarks, Links and Destinations

What is AutoBookmark™ Plug-in?: AutoBookmark™ is an advanced plug-in for Adobe® Acrobat® and Adobe® Acrobat Professional® software. The software is designed to create, edit and maintain all navigational elements of PDF documents: bookmarks, links and named destinations. The plug-in helps to quickly add bookmarks, links and named destinations across one or more PDF documents making them easier to navigate.
Bookmarking Functionality: PDF documents are much easier to navigate and interact with when they contain a navigable table of contents (bookmarks). Their appearance can be altered to make them easy to find and organize by using bookmarks to link to a different location in the open PDF file or even another PDF file. The plug-in allows automatic creation of bookmarks (outlines) for PDF documents based on text formatting styles, indentations and document contents. AutoBookmark™ plug-in helps to quickly add multi-level bookmarks bookmarks across one or more PDF documents making them easier to navigate. Software has special features for formatting bookmark titles and controlling their visual appearance. Software provides intuitive user interface that is easy to use for power users as well as for beginners.; AutoBookmark™ provides the following bookmarking functionality:; Automatic bookmark generation from text content
Creating bookmarks from links, comments and destinations
Creating bookmarks from ASCII text files
Adding bookmarks to files and folders
Copying bookmarks from another documents
Bookmarking every Nth page
Validating bookmarks
Sorting bookmarks alphabetically
Sorting pages based on bookmark order
Duplicating bookmarks
Merging duplicate titles
Replacing bookmark text
Adding text before and after bookmark titles
Editing bookmark visual appearance
Changing bookmark nesting levels
Removing bookmark actions and child items
Changing bookmark zoom
Changing text case
Converting bookmarks to use named destinations
Printing bookmarks and pages
Exporting bookmarks to text and XML
Deleting All Bookmarks
Batch processing support
Linking Functionality: Links are an essential part of any well designed PDF document. With thoughtfully provided links, users can quickly move from one part of a PDF document to another, to related information in a different document, or to a website that is relevant to the content. Clicking a link in a PDF is similar to clicking a link on a web page. Links can take you to another location in the current document, to other PDF documents or files, to websites or even execute a menu item. Creating links manually is tedious and time consuming process especially for large documents. AutoBookmark™ plug-in provides a set of easy-to-use software tools for automated link generation and editing.; AutoBookmark™ provides the following linking functionality:; Automatic link generation for user-defined words and phrases
Importing links from ASCII text file
Exporting links to ASCII text files for advanced editing
Creating a link report
Working with link errors
Cleanup Links and Bookmarks
Editing existing link and bookmark actions
Editing file and web references
Changing a visual appearance
Changing a zoom type
Changing open preference for linked documents
Converting links to use named destinations
Deleting links from selected pages or whole document
Batch processing support
Named Destination Support: A destination is the end point of a link or a bookmark and is represented by text in the "Destinations" panel of Adobe® Acrobat®. Destinations enable you to set navigation paths across a collection of PDFs. Linking to a destination is recommended when linking across documents because, unlike a link to a page, a link to a destination is not affected by the addition or deletion of pages within the target document. AutoBookmark™ plug-in provides automation tools that allow quick generation of named destinations from bookmarks and links.; AutoBookmark™ provides the following functionality for named destinations:; Automatic generation of named destinations from bookmarks
Automatic generation of named destinations from links
Creating bookmarks from named destinations
Related Links: Download Free 30-Days Trial Version
Buy software online
System Requirements

Application Menus and Toolbar

Bookmarks-Related Menus and Toolbar:

Links-Related Menus and Toolbar:

Features Summary / Bookmarking

Automatic Bookmark Generation From Document Content: AutoBookmark™ plug-in automatically generates multi-level bookmarks from the text attributes such as font name, size, left indentation and content. Software creates bookmarks from a matching single or multi-line text. The "Select Text" tool from Adobe® Acrobat® toolbar can be used to simplify bookmark level definition from text samples. The software scans pages of input PDF document and finds all occurrences of the matching text. The matching text is then used to create bookmarks. The bookmarks are automatically arranged into a nested hierarchy based on user settings. More than one font style can be used to describe each bookmark level. The software allows to perform a partial matching on font names and styles. Ability to work with multiple font styles and text patterns sets AutoBookmark™ plug-in apart from the other available tools on the market. Click here to see screenshots of some application dialogs.; Text Patterns:; Text patterns can be used for precise control over the bookmark titles generation when it is necessary to bookmark locations based on text content. The software uses powerful regular expressions for defining text patterns that describe a particular bookmark level headings. Only text that matches a specified text pattern is used for a bookmark title. Regular expressions are also optionally used to transform bookmark titles into desired format.; Stop Words:; The software provides a way to ignore unwanted bookmark titles. User-defined list of "stop words" is used to check each bookmark title against it. Bookmarks that contain any keyword from the "stop words" list are excluded from the output.; Bookmark Appearance:; AutoBookmark™ plug-in provides fine control over bookmarks color, style and zoom type. Appearance of the each bookmark level can be specified independently. Bookmark style can be set to one of the following: "plain", "italic", "bold", and "italic & bold". Zoom type controls the way a bookmarked location is displayed in the Acrobat viewer. Available list of Acrobats standard zoom types includes: "Fit Page", "Fit Width", "Fit Visible", "Actual Size", and "Inherit Zoom". Each bookmark level can be set to display in expanded or collapsed state.; Bookmark Content:; Bookmarks titles can be modified by adding custom text before and after each title or by completely changing or re-arranging bookmark text. Text case can be automatically changed to fit a desired style. This feature allows creating uniform and elegant appearance of the bookmark titles. Automatically add or remove leading numbers to the bookmark titles. Use numbers, letters or roman numeral for title enumeration. Software provides a way to limit length of the bookmarks text to avoid long unreadable bookmarks. Hyphenation can be optionally removed at the end of the lines. Use powerful regular expressions to search and replace bookmark titles.; Batch Processing:; Users of Adobe® Acrobat Professional® (for versions 6.0 and 7.0) and Adobe® Acrobat® 5.0 can use batch processing to add bookmarks across several PDF documents at once. AutoBookmark™ plug-in adds the "Generate Bookmark" (and several others) command to the Acrobats batch processing framework. This command can be used in any other batch sequence to automatically generate bookmarks for a document. Batch sequences can be executed on individual PDF files as well as on folder content.
Creating Bookmarks From Links: Automatically convert links in the PDF documents into interactive bookmarks. The plug-in converts each occurrence of the link annotation into a bookmark. Text covered by a link annotation is used as a bookmark title. Bookmarks will have the same actions as corresponding links. This operation provides a quick way of converting a hyperlinked table of contents into a set of interactive bookmarks. Tab leaders, page numbers, extra text lines, or duplicates spaces can be optionally removed from the bookmark titles. Click here to see a screenshot.
Creating Bookmarks From Comments: Automatically create bookmarks from notes and comments. Many types of commenting and drawing annotations can optionally have text comments attached. The plug-in scans a PDF document and bookmarks all locations of such annotations. The text content of the comment is used for the bookmark title. The bookmarks will point to the locations of corresponding annotations. Bookmark color can be optionally inherited from the originating annotation. There are options for removing duplicate spaces and extra text lines from bookmark titles. Click here to see a screenshot.
Creating Bookmarks From Named Destinations: Named destinations are often used to define navigation paths across one or more PDF documents. Named destination is a combination of a text label (name) and viewing area definition (such as page number and zoom type). Bookmarks can be easily created from existing "Destinations" records. Each bookmark is getting the same title as corresponding named destination and using it to define its action.
Creating Bookmarks From Text File: New bookmarks can be added to the PDF document from a control ASCII text file. The bookmark control file (click here for examples and format description) is a comma-delimited ASCII text that contains bookmark titles and their optional attributes such as text style, color, zoom, destination page and open/close state, named destination and optional keywords for specifying bookmark actions. The following bookmark actions are supported: "Go to a page in current document", "Go to a page in another document", "Open a web link", "Open a file", and "Execute menu item". Multilevel bookmark hierarchy can be defined by properly indenting each bookmark definition record. Click here to see a screenshot of the application dialog.
Add Bookmarks To Files: Automatically add bookmarks to selected files (any kind) or all PDF files in the selected folder (including sub-folders). New bookmarks are created by using file and folder names as bookmark titles. Each bookmark is assigned a "relative path" to link to a target file (using an "Open a file" action). The plug-in provides a variety of options to control a visual appearance of the bookmarks and the way external files are opened (in the new window, in the same window or using preferences). Click here to see a screenshot of the application dialog.
Bookmarking Every Nth Page: Automatically bookmark every Nth page in the document. Bookmarks can be generated just for a selected page range or for the whole document. Bookmark titles can be customized to include page numbers, page labels, first line of page text and etc. This is the easiest method to add bookmarks to unstructured documents. Click here to a screenshot.
"Find and Edit" Bookmarks: Select bookmarks based on title text and other attributes to apply a wide variety of editing operations. Selected bookmarks and their children can be duplicated, deleted, stripped of actions, expanded or collapsed, their appearance modified, moved one level up and etc. Bookmarks are selected by performing a text search (regular expressions are supported) and further filtered by their attributes such as presence of actions, types of the destinations, and presence of child bookmarks. This operation provides a powerful and flexible mechanism for managing existing bookmarks in PDF documents. Click here to see a screenshot.
Sorting Bookmarks: Bookmarks can be sorted alphabetically in ascending or descending order. Individual bookmarks or whole bookmark levels can be sorted separately. Click here to see a screenshot.
Validating Bookmarks: Existing bookmarks can be automatically validated by verifying their actions. Destination pages are checked to make sure they are referring to valid page numbers. External links are verified to make sure they are pointing to existing files or documents. Automatic validation procedure also catches other common problems such as missing titles or bookmarks with no assigned actions. This operation can be also executed in Acrobat batch processing framework. Validation results are written to a text log file (sample log file). Click here to see a screenshot.
Sorting Pages: Sort document pages based on the bookmark order. Pages that appear first in the bookmark tree will be moved to the beginning of the document. The plug-in correctly handles page ranges (no need to bookmark every page) and quickly arranges pages into desire order.
Duplicating Bookmarks: Easily duplicate existing bookmarks including all child bookmark entries. Duplicate bookmarks retain all properties of the originals including action and visual appearance.
Merging Duplicate Titles: Consecutive bookmarks with identical titles can be merged into a single bookmark and their child bookmarks are consolidated. One or more bookmark levels can be merged recursively.
Copying Bookmarks: Copy bookmarks from another PDF document to a currently open document or copy all bookmarks from a current document to a set of PDF files and folders (all PDF files in a folder are processed). Bookmark actions (hyperlinks) can be adjusted to point either to the locations within the source PDF document or converted to the same locations within destination file. Bookmarks can be inserted before, after or in place of existing bookmarks. This powerful option allows a free transfer of bookmarks between documents. This operation is useful when a set of common pre-defined bookmarks needs to be added to a new document(s). Click here to see screenshots: "Copy Bookmarks From" and "Copy Bookmarks To Files".
Replacing Bookmark Text: Bookmark titles can be searched for occurrence of specific text string and replaced with a new text. Software provides option for case-insensitive search and Unicode encoding. Regular expressions are supported. Click here to see a screenshot.
Adding Text To Existing Bookmarks: Easily add text before and after existing bookmark titles (prefix and suffix). Processing can be applied to one or more bookmark levels at once. White space characters are optionally trimmed from the original bookmark titles.
Changing Zoom Type: Change zoom type for all bookmarks in the document to one of the following: "Fit Page", "Fit Width", "Fit Visible", "Inherit Zoom", "Actual Size", "Custom View" or "Custom Zoom". This operation only affects bookmarks with "Go to a page in this document" and "Go to a page in another document" actions. Click here to see a screenshot.
Changing Text Case: Automatically convert bookmark text to uppercase, lowercase, sentence case or title case.
Converting To Named Destinations: Convert bookmark actions to use "named" destinations instead of direct references to a page. Destinations are automatically generated from existing bookmarks. Named destinations enable you to set navigation paths across a collection of PDF documents. Linking to a destination is recommended when linking across documents because unlike a link to a page, a link to a destination is not affected by the addition or deletion of pages within the target document. Named destinations can be also shared between multiple links or bookmarks within a document. For example, instead of using a direct link to page 10, a bookmark will point to the named destination "Chapter 1" . You will be able to link to this location using a human-readable name instead of a page number. Click here to see a screenshot.
Printing Bookmarks and Bookmarked Pages: AutoBookmark™ plug-in provides two printing options. It can print bookmark titles or bookmarked pages. Bookmark titles are indented according to their nesting level to reflect parent-child relationships. Bookmarked pages are printed in the order they are appearing in the bookmark panel.
Exporting Bookmarks: Bookmarks can be exported to either a text file format (sample output) or an XML document (sample output). Most bookmark attributes are exported into both text and XML format: title, destination page number, indentation, style, color, associated action type, destination view, zoom factor and external file references. Titles are properly indented to reflect parent-child relationships between bookmarks.
Deleting All Bookmarks: All bookmarks can be quickly deleted from the document with just one mouse click.
Batch Processing Support for Bookmarking: Users of Adobe® Acrobat Professional® (for versions 6, 7, and 8) and Adobe® Acrobat® 5.x can use batch processing framework to automate many bookmark-related operations. AutoBookmark™ adds the following commands to the batch processing framework:; "Create Bookmarks From Links" - convert links into interactive bookmarks.
"Create Bookmarks From Comments" - create bookmarks from notes or comments.
"Create Bookmarks From Named Destinations" - create bookmarks from named destinations
"Create Bookmarks From Text" - create bookmarks from control file.
"Convert To Named Destinations" - convert bookmarks to use named destinations.
"Change Text Case" - change case style of the bookmark text.
"Copy Bookmarks" - copy bookmarks from one PDF document to another.
"Delete All Bookmarks" - delete all bookmarks from a document.
"Export Bookmarks To Text" - export bookmarks to ASCII text file.
"Export Bookmarks To XML" - export bookmarks to XML file.
"Generate Bookmarks" - generate bookmarks based on text style, layout and content.
"Find and Edit Bookmarks" - search and perform variety of editing operations on bookmarks.
"Print Bookmarks" - print bookmarks to a default printer.
"Set Zoom Type" - change zoom type for all bookmarks at once.
"Replace Bookmark Text" - find and replace text in the bookmark titles.
"Merge Duplicate Bookmark Titles" - find and merge bookmarks with identical titles.
"Sort Bookmarks" - sort bookmarks alphabetically.
"Sort Pages" - sort pages based on the bookmark order.
"Validate" - check validity of bookmark properties and associated action.

Features Summary / Linking

Automatic Link Generation: Automatically add links to words and phrases using user-defined "link dictionaries". Link dictionary is a collection of search terms (such as words, phrases and etc.) and corresponding actions (such as "Go to a page view" or "Open a web page"). The software searches a document for occurrences of specific search terms and generates links according to the user specifications. Link dictionaries can be created manually using a supplied editor, imported from an ASCII text file or generated from bookmarks. Click here to see screenshots: main dialog and link dictionary editor. User has a full control over visual appearance of link annotations including color of the linked text. The screenshot below shows a sample document before and after running the automatic link generation:
Editing Existing Link and Bookmark Actions: Link and bookmark actions can be searched and replaced. Web page addresses (URLs) and external file references, named destination and JavaScript code - all can be searched for occurrence of specific text string and replaced with a user specified text. For example, you can easily change all hyperlinks to point from one web page to another URL or to change links to refer to a different file. This operation processes all links on all pages and all bookmarks in the input document.
Editing File and Web References: The plug-in comes with a handy tool that displays all file and web references for a currently opened PDF document. File references and URLs can be directly edited by modifying link's text. No need to browse for files or click through multiple dialogs. The software displays absolute and relative paths using different icons, and automatically checks file references for missing files. This is a must-have time-saving tool for links inspection and editing.
Exporting Links to an ASCII Text File: The existing links from one or more pages of the document can be exported to a comma-delimited ASCII text file. Links can be edited and imported back into the document if significant changes to the link attributes are required. For example, it can be used to change target file names, named destinations, web links or page numbers. Exported ASCII file can be used as a template to transfer links to another PDF documents. Click here for a description of the export file format.
Importing Links from an ASCII Text File: The ASCII text files (comma, tab, semicolon and space delimiters are supported) is an alternative way to add links to PDF documents. The easiest way to create such file is to export existing links to a text format, edit links attributes using any text editor (Notepad for example) and then import it into a target document. This method allows to repeat one or multi-page link template multiple times to add links to a large PDF document. Click here for a description of the import file format.
Creating Link Report: The software creates a detailed report (click here to see a sample of link report) on link usage within a PDF document. The report contains detailed statistics on link types, external files & URL dependencies, named destination references and link errors. The software checks link actions and detects the following errors:; - Destination page number is out of correct page range (for "Go to a page view in current document" actions).
- Referenced named destination does not exists (for "Go to a page view in current document" actions).
- Destination file name is not specified (for "Open a file" and "Go to a page in another document" actions).
- Destination file does not exists (for "Open a file" and "Go to a page in another document" actions).
- URL address is empty (for "Open a web link" action).
- Checks for proper URL formatting (for "Open a web link" action).
- Every external file reference is labeled as either relative or absolute to aid in finding absolute path links (absolute path links will be broken if PDF document is moved to a different location).

This functionality is also available as a batch command for quick processing of multiple documents at once. Link reports for individual PDF documents are saved into a single report file (in ASCII text format) to simplify file review and analysis.
Working With Link Errors: Link errors are common in PDF documents and present a certain challenge for detecting and fixing them. AutoBookmark plug-in helps in this process by automatically marking up all detected link errors with sticky text notes. Text notes are placed at the location of the invalid links (sample screenshot) and appear in the red color. Each note contains a text message that describe the nature of the link problem. You can work with text notes using excellent commenting tools that come with Adobe Acrobat. The plug-in also provides several convenient functions for navigating between pages that contain link errors. All error markup created by the plug-in can be easily removed with supplied "Remove Error Markup" menu. "Mark Up Link Errors" command is also available in the batch processing framework making easier to find and mark up errors in many PDF documents at once.
Cleanup Links and Bookmarks: Use the "cleanup" functionality of the plug-in to automatically inspect PDF documents and remove links to missing files or pages, links without assigned actions and automatically convert absolute path references into relative ones (if possible). Absolute links to external files are common problem that most Acrobat users may eventually encounter. A full path or absolute path is a path that points to the same location on one file system regardless of the working directory of the document that contains a link. If a document uses absolute paths then it cannot be easily moved to another computer (unless this computer contains exactly the same path) or written on a CD without breaking a link. A relative path is a path relative to the current location of the document. Relative path will continue to work when a group of linked documents is moved into a different location or burned on CD/DVD. The plug-in can find and convert absolute file references into a relative ones if it is technically possible. Some paths cannot be converted into a relative form (for example, if a destination file is located on a different drive). The "Cleanup" operation generates a detailed report in a text format.
Changing Links Visual Appearance: Easily modify visual appearance of the existing links on one or more pages. Change border attributes such as visibility, style, color and line thickness as well as modify the way links are highlighted. The software can also optionally change color of the linked text. This feature comes handy when it is necessary to modify existing documents to comply with certain regulations or requirements. For example, Food and Drug Administration requires that for certain document submissions, link text must be blue with an invisible hyperlink on top. The software can quickly make your documents to comply with this and similar regulations. The screenshot below shows a sample hyperlink before and after it appearance has been changed by the function:
Converting Links to Use Named Destinations: Convert link actions to use "named" destinations instead of direct references to a page. Destinations are automatically generated from existing links. Named destinations enable you to set navigation paths across a collection of PDF documents. Linking to a destination is recommended when linking across documents because unlike a link to a page, a link to a destination is not affected by the addition or deletion of pages within the target document. Named destinations can be also shared between multiple links or bookmarks within a document. For example, instead of using a direct link to page 10, a link will point to the named destination "Chapter 1" . You will be able to link to this location using a human-readable name instead of a page number.
Changing Links Zoom Type: Change zoom type for all links in the document to one of the following: "Fit Page", "Fit Width", "Fit Visible", "Inherit Zoom", "Actual Size", "Custom View" or "Custom Zoom". This operation only affects links with "Go to a page in this document" and "Go to a page in another document" actions.
Changing Linked Documents Open Preference: Change the way Adobe Acrobat opens linked documents without manually editing every link in the PDF documents. The plug-in provides functionality to change open window preference for all links (within selected page range) to one of the following: "Window open by user preference", "New Window" and "Existing Window".
Deleting Links: Delete all links from one or more pages of a document. All link types are processed.
Batch Processing Support for Linking: Users of Adobe® Acrobat Professional® (for versions 6, 7, and 8) and Adobe® Acrobat® 5.x can use batch processing framework to automate many link-related operations. AutoBookmark™ adds the following commands to the batch processing framework:; "Cleanup Links and Bookmarks" - convert absolute file references into relative, delete dead links and etc.
"Convert to Use Named Destinations"- convert links to use named destinations and generate destinations from links actions.
"Create Links From Dictionary" - automatically generate links for words and phrases.
'Create Report" - create link usage report, including file & URL dependencies and link errors.
"Delete Links" - delete links from one or more pages.
"Export Links To Text" - export links to a comma-delimited ASCII text file.
"Import Links From Text" - import links from a comma-delimited ASCII text file.
"Mark Up Link Errors" - mark up link errors with sticky notes.
"Search and Replace Link Actions" - quickly search and replace file, web, and named destinations references
"Set Appearance" - set links visual appearance.
"Set Open Preference" - set window preference for opening external PDF documents.
"Set Zoom Type" - set zoom type for links pointing to page views.

System Requirements

Platforms:: Microsoft® Windows Vista/XP/2003/2000
Software:: Full version of Adobe® Acrobat® software is required (versions 5, 6, 7, 8). This software will not work with free Adobe Acrobat® Reader®. Batch processing functionality requires presence of Adobe® Acrobat Professional® (for versions 6, 7, 8).
(Adobe Acrobat Product Comparison Chart).; PAD File