Bookmarks not exporting

English
#1

Hi.

When editing a PDF & exporting as PDF the bookmarks aren’t there, I use Sumatra PDF viewer. After exporting, the bookmarks are just page numbers.

I tried opening a PDF which shows the bookmarks fine in Sumatra, I open that same PDF in Libre & without editing anything I try exporting but the bookmarks are just page numbers in the exported PDF.

I’ve just spent 2 hours of my life on this which should just be easy to do, especially considering I’m not even editing anything on a PDF with already working bookmarks.

Thanks for your time.

#2

Please reword your post to make the question more clear (edit it, don’t add a comment). What do you want to achieve? What is your goal? Mention OS name and LO version. What is the relation between Sumatra PDF Viewer (commercial? free?) and LO?

I remind you that PDF is a page description format where all “intelligence” in text has been lost (flow of text, argumentation, …). This ends up as a collection of shapes (glyphs and images) laid out on a sheet. Consequently, editing the textual contents is nearly impossible in a sensible and “comfortable” way.

LO sees PDFs as graphical files and opens them in Draw, the drawing component, without trying to interpret metadata associated with the file. This means that TOC, bookmarks, … are simply ignored by Draw…

What are you trying to export? The PDF contents as a new PDF? This does not make sense because Draw will practically turn everything into an even more “graphical” form.

#4

Ok, you got me. Thanks for putting in the time to explain. I understand, there’s more to it than I thought.

I just didn’t think there was that much to just editing a PDF & exporting it with its bookmarks in tact you know? I’m not editing the bookmarks by the way, just adding text & exporting.

Anyways files are the following, I’d appreciate your time if you could tell me how or what I’m doing wrong.

#5
#6

What are you trying to do? Update the manual?
If it is only adding one or two words somewhere, you can try to patch the pdf page in Draw but you’ll stumble on a few issues: use the same font and size as the original so that your patch is not noticeable, position correctly your patch. You won’t be able to reflow the text. Also all meta data in the original PDF will be lost.
If your work is an important revision of the manual, the best thing to do is to rebuild a text document.

  • open both the manual in a PDF reader and Writer
  • copy TEXT ONLY from the PDF (except the TOC) and paste it as Unformatted Text into Writer
  • delete the spurious paragraph marks at end of each line to reconstitute the paragraphs (keep only the final paragraph mark in each real paragraph)
  • remove numbers in heading and lists (so that they can ge automatically generated in a consistent way by Writer)
  • style your paragraph (Heading n for headings, Body Text for main text, caption styles for image captions, other dedicated styles you may need to create
  • add the list styles where you have numbered lists
  • don’t do that on headings; they are controlled by Tools>Chapter Numbering
  • copy images from PDF and paste them into Writer
  • if possible, make image layout relative to text homogeneous by design (e.g. centered between margins, above the caption) and store these settings in a single frame style; apply this frame style on the image immediately after pasting (they will magically jump to your design position)
  • insert the TOC field where it belongs

Once you have your editable document corresponding to the manual, you can begin to work.

IMHO, it is more efficient and reliable than patching the PDF and, in the end, probably faster than pouring sweat on the PDF by patching.

#7

ajlittoz, your time’s appreciated, thanks!

Yes just wanted to update the manual. In the “2 Exported Manual” file, I added pages 2 & 3, then used the same fonts, font size & added some entries, basically by just copying & pasting one of the original text entry boxes & editing to make sure I’m using the same font & size.
All pages from 4 onwards are untouched. But as you’ve already explained, there’s more going on in the background than meets the eye.

If you say it’s more efficient & reliable than patching, I’d rather do it that way, anything that saves me future sweat.

Your steps are definitely more than I thought there would be, & I’m not sure I understand ALL of them but I’ll give it a try.

It’s just a shame because in my edited exported manual, literally everything looks right & in place as you can see, including images, except for bookmarks & the TOC links.

Sorry to bother you, I’ll give your steps a go.

Thanks again.

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