Word 2010 Save as PDF problem: Cannot create bookmarks using Headings

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I am saving a work doc as a PDF, and I need the PDF to have bookmarks. I cannot choose the Headings option in the Options>Include non-printing information>Create bookmarks using: option. I have no idea why. This document uses the same template as the preceding Word doc I wrote, which does allow me to choose Headings. See the above screenshots.

Can anyone help me solve this?

Also, what is the deal with Word bookmarks? Specifically, not apparently allowing for spaces in between words or symbols like “-” etc. I tried the Include non-printing information>Create bookmarks using:>Word bookmarks option. But having all the words running together with no spacing looks terrible. Is there something I am overlooking here? There must be a way to have acceptable looking bookmarks in the PDF I am creating from Word 2010.

Thanks.

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On my Word 2010 machine I can see that the options dialog is smart enough to work out what non-printing information is actually in the file. If my document doesn’t contain any headings then I can’t choose to create Acrobat bookmarks with the Headings option. If my document doesn’t contain any bookmarks then I can’t choose to create Acrobat bookmarks with the Bookmarks option.

Word and Acrobat have different ideas about what a ‘Bookmark’ is.
In Word, a bookmark is a named range which serves as an anchor point for cross-references or a way to label and jump around the document. The naming rules for bookmarks in Word are draconian (no spaces, limit on number of characters etc). Bookmarks in Word have no hierarchy or ‘tree view’.
In Acrobat, a bookmark is a navigation tool which can be displayed hierarchically on the side of the window. This is comprised of a friendly text entry which can be clicked on to jump the window to a particular page position and set the zoom on the display.

The way to create acceptable looking Bookmarks in Acrobat is to use Heading styles in your Word document and then choose the Headings option when creating the PDF. You can edit/add bookmarks in the PDF after it has been created but it isn’t much fun and requires software that allows editing the PDF file directly.

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In addition to the built-in headings, custom headings with paragraph outline levels 1 to 9 assigned can also be used to automatically generate PDF-style bookmarks. It appears that your document uses custom headings, so your simplest change is to modify each custom heading style appropriately.

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Hey folks,

Thanks for your replies. The thing is, both these Word docs originate from the same template, and there are several headings in this template, with Chapter Heading, Heading 1, and Heading 2 assigned to appear in the TOC. In the first doc, they are recognized by Word as Headings I can create bookmarks from. In the second doc, they are not. That is what is confusing to me.

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That would puzzle me too. Have you checked the paragraph outline levels of the headings in your second document?

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