How to Create an Outline in a PDF with Scribus

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HiddenPlane

Thank you, Scribus community, for this product and for your help. I'm at the end of a 270 page self-publication, and I made it with no major hiccups. My last hurdle was the TOC Table of Contents and an Outline that shows up in the PDF left bar that's clickable for navigation. The help documentation doesn't cover how this comes together, so this tutorial will fill in the gaps. You CAN do this now.

Disclaimers: I'm using 1.5.7.
This works on text frames, but works best on Title Bars, because the text becomes the Outline name.
This tutorial is a bare bones demonstration of the functionality.
I'm exporting PDF 1.6 compatibility.


  • Select a text frame on your first page. I selected "Table of Contents."
  • Ribbon: Item -> PDF Options => Click Is PDF Bookmark
  • Select a text frame on your second page and set that to bookmark, also. I selected "Chapter 1: Foreword."
  • Select a text frame on your third page and set that to bookmark, also. I selected a sub-element of Chapter 1.
  • Ribbon: Windows => Bookmarks. You should see the three items you set as bookmarks. Drag #3 on top of #2. This sets your sub-element of Chapter 1 as a child item of the Outline hierarchy.
  • Ribbon: File -> Export => Save as pdf (Do not forget this next step or it won't work.)
  • In the Main tab of the pdf export menu, CHECK ON "Include Bookmarks!"

Done. Now when you view your PDF, you should have an Outline with 2 elements and a sub-element child of the 2nd. When you click on any of the Outline elements, they will navigate you to the page with that element's text frame:
    Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Foreword
      Subelement

christianbethel

Hello, first time poster here. Whenever you open a PDF document, do you have to render the text as text or vector graphics?

utnik

hi christian

it depends...
if you need the text as editable text, you check '...as text'. but the layout may be altered. but if you need the original layout, you should check '...as vector graphics'.
scribus is not a program intended to manipulate .pdf files.

utnik

christianbethel