InDesign Tutorial: Creating Separate TOCs for PDF Bookmarks and the Page

Over on the InDesign Facebook Group a design­er asked for help cre­at­ing a PDF with two dif­fer­ent depths of tables of con­tents. He said, “I’m cre­at­ing a PDF man­u­al in InDesign. The Table of Contents [on the page] needs to list only Chapter Title and Heading 1 [para­graph styles], but I want the nav­i­ga­tion­al menu [Bookmarks side­bar] in the PDF to list Chapter Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 [para­graph styles].”

That’s easy. Here’s how.

  1. Create the on-the-page Table of Contents and uncheck the option to Create PDF Bookmarks as in Figure 1.
    2. Figure 1: Creating the first, on-the-page table of contents.
    Figure 1: Creating the first, on-the-page table of contents.
  2. Also using the Layout > Table of Contents com­mand, set up the sec­ond, deep­er TOC for the Bookmarks side­bar. In this ver­sion, do check the option to Create PDF Bookmarks. Also ensure that Replace Existing Table of Contents is disabled.
  3. Place this table of con­tents on the paste­board, not on a page, and not over­lap­ping or touch­ing any page (see Figure 2).
    4. Figure 2: Creating the second TOC to become PDF bookmarks.
    Figure 2: Creating the sec­ond TOC to become PDF bookmarks.
  4. Export to Interactive PDF and enjoy the two TOCs (see Figure 3).
    5. Figure 3: The resulting PDF with both tables of contents the smaller, on-the-page version as well as the deeper Bookmarks sidebar.
    Figure 3: The result­ing PDF with both tables of contents–the small­er, on-the-page ver­sion as well as the deep­er Bookmarks sidebar.

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