Importing Bookmarks from Existing to New PDFs

MPham
MPham Posts: 3
in Product Ideas & Feedback

Hello,

I've been searching for a way to import existing bookmarks to a new pdf using bluebeam, but there is no such function. I reached out to Bluebeam support and they confirmed that this function does not exist and I should make a suggestion here.

I would like to see a bookmark import function. Coming from using PDF Xchange Editor, you can simply copy the bookmarks in the bookmark window and paste it to a new pdf's bookmark window. I switched jobs recently and my current company only use Bluebeam.

Please let me know if this is in the works.

Thank you.

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  • Luke Shiras
    Luke Shiras Posts: 390

    I can see the benefit of this but in the meantime, is there something special about your bookmarks that recreating them automatically wouldn't solve?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acEmk19u2AE

  • MPham
    MPham Posts: 3

    My bookmarks are not special, just need to jump to the correct page. Bluebeam auto bookmark function works well for drawings, but doesn't work for reports where you cannot easily assign bookmarks.

    What I do is I would have individual pdfs for each section of the report, then for each new revisions, I would combine all the pdfs and redo all the bookmarks each time.

  • Jes Stafford
    Jes Stafford Posts: 70

    When we work with specifications, having similar formatting issues to your reports, that limit the PAGE REGION automation that Bluebeam has built in, we solved the problem with careful standardization of headers and footers that allow the PAGE REGION to be used as easily on all copy documents as it does on drawings.

    ~j

  • MPham
    MPham Posts: 3

    Thanks Jes, that is a good way to do it. Depending on the requirements of a particular document format, headers/footers are not always permitted.

    I just Hope Bluebeam will implement the copy and paste function for bookmarks, so if ever need to revise a pdf (replace, delete, or recompile), we wouldn't need to redo all the bookmarks.

  • Shaya Birnbaum
    Shaya Birnbaum Posts: 54

    I agree. Importing and exporting bookmarks would be extremely helpful.

  • Tara’s iPad
    Tara’s iPad Posts: 2

    I also would like to advocate for the ability to import bookmarks. It would be an additional function that seems inherent if you allow for exporting.

  • Chase
    Chase Posts: 1

    There is a work around I use for this. You have to relink all the bookmarks, but you don't have to rewrite them at least.

    Essentially, since you can't move the bookmarks, just move the pages from your new document into the old document with the bookmarks and save as.

    Save the existing PDF with the bookmarks with a new name. > Delete all but 1 page of the PDF. > Paste all the pages of the new PDF into the one with bookmarks. > Delete the original page from the PDF. > You now have your existing bookmark structure in your new PDF. > Go through your pages and right click each bookmark when on the correct page "set to current view".

  • Alexandre de Massy
    Alexandre de Massy Posts: 3
    edited January 29

    I also often have to package documents, assembling documents from multiple sources in a single one. I would like if there were an easy way to preserve the bookmarks when combining pdf and inserting pages.

    I would also like to see a "bookmark manager" tool so we can reorder and modify the bookmarks structure more easily than manually one by one. And a automatic bookmark creation tool that recognizes text headers rather than only "page region" or "page labels".

    Like MPham I have found pdf-xchange to do much better in that area for now..

  • Glynis D.
    Glynis D. Posts: 37

    @MPham

    Reading through your issue I wanted to see if I could come up with a workflow in the meantime that could speed things along a bit. Replace pages may solve your issue as long the bookmarks just need to go to the same page that they did before.

    1. Open the document that has the bookmarks already created.

    2. Select Document > Replace Pages

    image-61300575d2b15-946e.png

    3. Select the new document that does not have bookmarks.

    4. Adjust the range of the pages you want to replace so it is all pages

    image-119e96fc3cf67-ca47.png

    5. The bookmarks are in place and still go to the same page number but the content of the page is the new information.

    image-cb8610c6195ad-a406.png

    From here you would just need to save as to rename the document. Does this speed things along for you?

  • Mike Fischer
    Mike Fischer Posts: 2
    edited 3:01AM

    @Glynis D.,

    Try it both ways though, one with replace page content only checked on and another with it unchecked. The bookmarks lose their link on one of those, I forget which one at the moment.

    Bookmarks are a big part of organizing a set for efficiency. I’ve often thought that if bookmarks could be exported and imported similar to how markups can be, much of my bookmarking hassles could be solved.

    When you export markups, the .bfx file is essentially a blank multi page pdf with the markups still tied to each appropriate page in its place. I think that functionality with bookmarks could go a long way.

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