Add bookmarks to a PDF
A hundred-page document without an outline is read blind. Vélin reads the document’s headings and offers you the outline they draw; you correct it, and it becomes real bookmarks, clickable in the side panel of any reader.
Free · 100% local — nothing is uploaded- 1Open your PDF.
- 2Let Vélin work the outline out from the headings, or build it by hand.
- 3Download: the bookmarks travel with the file.
How to add bookmarks to a PDF
Open the document: Vélin reads its headings and offers you the outline they draw, with its levels. You rename, move, indent or remove what needs it, then you write the outline into the file. The result is not a contents page added to the document: these are real bookmarks, the ones that show in the side panel of Acrobat, Preview, Chrome or an e-reader, and that lead to the right page in one click. A report, a dissertation, a manual, a specification stop being a wall of pages. The outline can also be built entirely by hand if the document has no recognizable headings, and each entry renames without touching the text of the page. Nothing is uploaded: the document stays on your device, and the bookmarks written are the format’s own, not a layer belonging to Vélin.
The outline worked out from the headings
A document’s headings do not announce themselves with a tag, as in a web page: they are recognized by the way they are set — a larger size, a heavier weight, a position at the start of a block, a numbering. That is what Vélin measures to propose an outline, and it is why it shows it to you before writing rather than deciding alone. On a well-set document the proposal is almost always right; on a document where everything is the same size, better to build the outline by hand.
Bookmarks, contents page, links: three different things
Bookmarks live in the reader’s panel and do not print. A contents page is a page of the document, printable, whose entries are only clickable if links are laid on them. Links, for their part, can be laid on any text or any area. A well-made document often has all three, and they are built here with two neighbouring tools.
Frequently asked questions
What is a bookmark in a PDF?
It is an entry in the document’s outline, shown in the side panel of Acrobat, Preview or a browser, and it leads to a particular page. Not to be confused with a table of contents printed on a page, which is only text.
How is the outline worked out?
From the size, the weight and the position of the lines: a document’s headings stand apart from its body text by the way they are set. You see the proposed outline before it is written, and you can rename, move, indent or remove any entry.
Can I make a multi-level outline?
Yes: parts, chapters and sections nest, and the reader’s panel folds them like a table of contents.
Do bookmarks survive a merge or a split?
Yes: they travel with their pages. After a merge, the outlines of the joined documents follow one another; after a page is deleted, an entry that no longer leads anywhere is realigned or removed.
What about a clickable table of contents inside the page?
That is something else: those are links laid on text, which the Links tool can create and check. The two complement each other — the outline in the panel, the contents on the page.