How to create PDF with bookmarks in Microsoft Word?

With our service, Cometdocs, you can, for example, convert PDF to Word online or on iPad, but sometimes we wish to do the opposite – to create a PDF. Microsoft Word allows you to easily create PDFs directly from their software. In the process of creating, sometimes we need to create bookmarks as well.  Bookmarks are extremely handy in browsing through a larger document, and that is why we want to make the reading process more intuitive for our readers.

This is especially the case if we are creating a longer paper, or an e-book. In such situations, bookmarks are a must and readers will probably search for them.

There are actually two ways to create bookmarks in PDF using Word. We can turn all headings into bookmarks when printing to PDF, or create all of our bookmarks manually.

To insert a bookmark in Word, simply select a desired word, go to Insert – Bookmarks, add a new bookmark and give it a name.

insert a bookmark in microsoft word

If you see some bookmarks that you didn’t create, you can easily delete them by clicking on an appropriate button. Sometimes Word generates bookmarks by itself or it can happen during the process of PDF to Word conversion.

delete word bookmark or add a new one

In any case, if you only need headings turned into bookmarks, you just need to properly assign them.

create a new heading in word

After this, go to Save As menu and choose PDF format in the drop down menu.

options when saving into pdf

Now click on Options, as you see in the image.

Select the option Create bookmarks using.

create bookmarks in pdf when printing from word

Finally, choose the option you want, either Word bookmarks, or Header.

bookmarks in pdf files

And that will be all. Now open your PDF file, go to Bookmarks menu and check if everything got saved properly.

Categories PDF