TOC Link and Interactive PDF Document

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Ryan Williams
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 3:02 pm

TOC Link and Interactive PDF Document

Unread post by Ryan Williams »

In my project, I've created a few TOC entries that are links. When I publish to Interactive PDF format, the document looks great. The information is in the correct areas, but the TOC doesn't work as I expected it to. All TOC entries that were created as links in the H&M project go to the SOURCE topic instead of the destination information created in the PDF.

Example:

Code: Select all

Topic 1
Topic 1 contents:  This is a test topic for demo purposes only.
Topic 2 (linked to Topic 1)
Topic 2 contents are actually Topic 1's contents being shown
The PDF creates duplicate copies of the Topic 1 contents in both areas. The Topic 2 entry in the TOC will take you to Topic 1 instead of the duplicated information in Topic 2.

Is there a way to fix the PDF TOC?
Will this also happen in Word and eBook?

Thanks,
Ryan
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Tim Green
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Location: Bruehl, Germany
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Re: TOC Link and Interactive PDF Document

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Ryan,
All TOC entries that were created as links in the H&M project go to the SOURCE topic instead of the destination information created in the PDF.
It sounds as if you have simply selected the wrong target for your links. What exactly are you trying to link to in the TOC? Linking to anything except a topic in the TOC is generally a really bad idea and very confusing for users unless it is a web page in WebHelp that you want to display in the topic pane (and that too won't be possible in future responsive layouts, so beware). In PDFs, TOC entries created as Internet links won't link to anything at all and should be excluded with a build option.

Also be aware that there are two TOCs in PDF documents: The print-style TOC at the beginning of the document, generated by Help & Manual, and the "Bookmarks" TOC generated by the PDF reader program for interactive documents, generally displayed at the upper left. By default only the standard sections and topics in your project are included in the Bookmarks TOC. You can add sections to the Bookmarks TOC in the PDF template (also user-defined sections/pages) by entering a title text for the PDF Bookmark Text entry in the Page Options of the section in Manual Designer.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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