I’m often asked how to create an interactive PDF with InDesign with internal links so that you can, for example, click on a chapter title in the contents page and immediately get the PDF to jump to that page.

How to create an interactive PDF with internal links video

So I’ve made a video to show how to create hyperlink destinations within the InDesign document and then create buttons to go to them when clicked.

Interactive PDF example

To see an example of an interactive PDF then you can download my free e-book How to Market Yourself Online or, if you’re feeling rich, you can download the premium version How To Get Clients which is featured in the video.

Usual characteristics of interactive PDFs

PDFs that are normally exported from Word documents are usually linear, ugly and hard to read. They are usually upright pages of black Times New Roman text with a few hyperlinks.

In my opinion you can do so much more with PDFs. For starters you have the pages landscape so that they fill the screen. And you should use vector graphics, images, internal links, etc. You can also have forms, movies, layers, rollovers – just about any interactivity that we are used to on the web.

This makes the e-book fun, interactive, non-linear and the sort of publication that you can dip in and navigate around quickly so as to aid the reading and learning experience.

Creating internal links in the interactive PDF

In order to create an internal link within a PDF, you first have to create a Text Anchor in InDesign. With the Text Tool cursor either blinking or having highlighted some text you can create a Text Anchor by either right-clicking and selecting Interactive > New Hyperlink Destination… or by selecting New Hyperlink Destination in the Hyperlinks palette.

The page with this hyperlink destination on it can now be linked to from some text or a button on another page.

If you want to link to the Hyperlink Destination (page) by clicking a button: convert an object to a button by right-clicking and choosing Interactive > Convert to Button.

And then when you have created a button select Go To Desination as the Action of that button in the Buttons palette.

And then you can set the destination of that button as the Text Anchor or Hyperlink Destination you set earlier so that when that button is clicked the PDF will go to the relevant page.

If you want to link to the Hyperlink Destination (page) by clicking a text link: simply highlight the text that you want to be the internal link, and either click the Create new hyperlink button on the Hyperlink palette or, with the text highlighted, right-click and choose Interactive > New Hyperlink… and then in the resulting New Hyperlink dialogue box you can choose the Hyperlink Destination, a Character Style (something colorful and underlined like a link), the Appearance Type (choose Invisible Rectangle) and a Highlight (I usually don’t have one).

And now in the resulting PDF the word, when clicked, will take you to the relevant page of the Hyperlink Destination.

Creating external links in the interactive PDF

Creating hyperlinks in the InDesign document to go to web addresses when clicked is altogether more simple. All you do is select the word which is going to be the hyperlink and click the Create new hyperlink button in the Hyperlinks palette and choose URL in the New Hyperlink dialogue box and type the web address you want to link to.

I usually create a different colored but underlined Character Style for both the internal link text and the hyperlink text to aid the users’ navigation around the document.

Exporting the interactive PDF from InDesign

Remember to choose Adobe PDF (Interactive) when you’ve got the Export dialogue box up by going Cmd/Ctrl-E.

As I say in the video I like to set the Security to have None Changes Allowed in order to get rid of a very annoying pink bar along the top in Acrobat Reader when viewing the PDF. (Note to Adobe: fix this bug please!)

Creating e-books?

So, if you want to create an intuitive, beautiful and interactive PDF e-book to be sold online, I would very much recommend you do it in InDesign. Try to incorporate internal links, external links, video, etc., and as many exciting interactive elements as you can.

What other devices and interactivity can you think of to improve the humble PDF?

I would love to know your opinion in the comments below. And, if you found this post useful, please do me a favor and Tweet, Like or +1 it.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Giving away free gifts is excellent marketing. It fosters loyalty and brand recognition. I’m giving away free 2012 calendars as PDFs. I’m also making available the InDesign and Illustrator files that were used to create the PDFs, so you can create and brand your own calendars and do the same thing, if you so wish!

Branded calendars are classic marketing materials because they are the sort of thing that “hang around” for the whole year. So your logo and your marketing message will be seen for much longer than just a few days.

Literally thousands of visitors arrive at this site every year to download these calendars.

Free 2012 Calendars to download as a PDF file

I have two PDFs here for free download. One has the whole year on a single page and the other is a 12 page document with a month on every page.

You may like to download the above PDFs by going right-click and choosing “Save as…” or “Save target as…”.

Free 2012 Calendars to download as Illustrator files

The calendar which has the whole year on one page was created in Adobe Illustrator. Here is a version in Illustrator CS5 saved as an Adobe Illustrator file (.AI) plus, for those of you with earlier versions of Illustrator, there is an EPS saved as an Illustrator 9 file.

Free 2012 Calendars to download as InDesign files

The 12 page calendar with a month to a page was created in Adobe InDesign. InDesign is a bit of a nightmare when opening in legacy versions. Firstly, I created the calendar in InDesign version CS5, I then exported this as an InDesign Mark-up Language File (IDML), then opened that in InDesign CS4 and saved a copy, before, finally, exporting from CS4 an InDesign Interchange document (INX) which can be opened in CS3.

All of the PDFs, InDesign and Illustrator files

And here are the two calendars as PDFs, the two different Illustrator files and all the various InDesign files all together in a ZIP file.

Linked text frames/boxes

Both calendars have linked text boxes in the InDesign and Illustrator files. This means that you can use these calendars in 2013, 2014, 2015, and every year to come by just shunting the numbers on in the boxes. So if one month starts on a Monday in 2012 and a Tuesday in 2013, you can just add an extra carridge return or frame break and all the dates will move over to the correct days.

I explained this in more detail last year in this video I made:

As you can see in the video linked text frames in calendars automate their creation year-on-year.

Regular readers and new readers

I apologise to my regular readers who have seen this last year and a big “hello” to new readers who have come to this site for the first time to download these calendars. You would not believe how much traffic I get from this giveaway, which is why I do it every year.

Is it a bit early to give away 2012 calendars in mid-October 2011? I don’t think so. Now is about time graphic designers get requests to do calendars for the next year. I am seeing from my Google Analytics that I’m already getting traffic from people searching for “2012 calendars to download” or such-like, so I thought it best to create them now.

So, if you’ve found this useful please feel free to Tweet, Like or vote for this article and, if it’s not too early to say it, Happy New Year!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Here’s a present for my visitors and subscribers as a BIG “thank you” for all the support and encouragement I’ve received over the year!

Every year I send Christmas cards to all my clients with a calendar of the next year on the back. Putting something useful like a calendar on the back of a Christmas card creates extra value.

Single page 2011 Calendar in Illustrator EPS format download

Here is an Illustrator EPS document (CS2) of a
2011 calendar on one page.

Single page 2011 Calendar in Adobe Acrobat PDF format download

Here is an Adobe Acrobat PDF of a
2011 calendar on one page.

12 page 2011 Calendar in InDesign INDD format download

Here is an InDesign document (CS4) of a
2011 calendar with one month per page.

12 page 2011 Calendar in Adobe Acrobat PDF format download

Here is an Adobe Acrobat PDF of a
2011 calendar with one month per page.

A calendar you can use any year!

The calendars in Illustrator and InDesign come with linked text frames (or text boxes).

So, as you can see above, the dates are all linked. So if you want January to start on a Sunday (which it will in 2012) instead of Saturday, you type 26 and hit enter in the box before where 27 is now. Enter moves the text to the next linked text frame so that all the dates will shift over one day. It’s a lot better that moving them over one by one!

Here is a short video about linking text frames in InDesign and Illustrator using these calendars as an example.

This short video tutorial uses the above Illustrator and InDesign files as examples to explain how to link text frames.

I always appreciate feedback!

As always, if you found this useful, please use the buttons below to tweet, vote or recommend this article. I’d also love to hear your comments about the calendars.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I’m a bit late this year but I’ll be artworking it up this weekend and then writing them over the week to make sure they get there at least a week before Christmas.

Calendars are quite tricky things to do – not all months have the same number of days, not all months start on the same day and, while most months require 5 rows of weeks (Monday to Sunday) to complete, some months refuse to play the game and require 6 rows of weeks. Even worse, February 2010, requires only 4 rows of weeks as it starts on a Monday!

(OK, I can see this may not be the most fascinating subject for a blog post but graphic designers find this sort of thing really interesting!)

A calendar you can use for any year!

I have found that putting the relevant date into the appropriate place in the calendar a tad annoying. There’s 365 of them to do so, who wouldn’t? So I have hit on a great solution to help my fellow graphic designers to successfully set up a calendar for all the years to come … linked textboxes!

So, as you can see above, the dates are all linked. So if you want January to start on a Saturday (which it will in 2011) instead of Friday, you type 27 and hit enter in the box before where 28 is now. Enter moves the text to the next linked text box so that all the dates will shift over one day. It’s an awful lot better that moving them over one by one!

Download the PDF and Adobe Illustrator (AI) file for the 2010 Calendar

Please click on one of the icons below to download the calendar.

The AI was produced in CS3 and the document color mode is RGB. You will need the Trebuchet MS font loaded. I tried to save it in a legacy format but the linked text boxes would not work.

Please let me know if this has been useful for you. And if anyone wants a Christmas card contact me with your address and I’ll send you one through the post! Happy Christmas!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

They are not meant to be golden rules but after years and years of doing them I find they come in handy!

Click the image below to download the PDF.

Six “rules” for making an on-screen PDF

Here they are:

• Do it in RGB not CMYK This may not be an issue when exporting the PDF from Word or Powerpoint but very much is if exporting the PDF from Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign. In InDesign go Edit > Transparency Blend Space > RGB.
• Use A4 (297mm by 210mm) or Letter (279.4 mm by 215.9 mm) size so it will print out on desktop printers This just makes it easier for people using your PDF to print it out.
• Do not put anything within 10mm of the edge of the page as it may not be printed out by a desktop printer Most printers will not print right to the edge of the paper. This is a shame if you have a background image or graphic covering the whole page and is worth noting when considering a background.
• Make the format landscape not portrait so that the PDF fills the screen Seems obvious, but …
• Use vectors (AIs, EPSs) for graphics and logos not JPGs or other bitmaps This is a big, big issue for me. I am often very surprised to see PDFs from large corporations who have graphics (in some cases their own logos) in a jagged, pixellated bitmap form when the vector will appear beautiful and sharp in a PDF. It is possible to export PDFs with vectors from the Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign) but, sadly, impossible when exporting from Word or Powerpoint. Mac users, good news! Apple’s Pages application, which is free with all Mac’s, will create PDFs with vectors! If you don’t know the difference between vectors and bitmaps download the PDF and you will see what I mean.
• Enable interactive elements and hyperlinks so that users can click on websites and email addresses One of the great benefits of PDFs are their interactivity. It is important to check when exporting, especially from InDesign, that Interactive Elements and Hyperlink are checked so that buttons, web addresses and email addresses are clickable.

Interactive PDFs and rich media PDFs

I have written more about interactive PDFs and how to make them on this site. Also there are many more exciting things that can be done with the humble PDF. Buttons, rollovers and showing and hiding layers on a page are all possible in PDFs. Video and audio can also be added (either embedded or streamed from the internet). It is an area of great potential.

What are your experiences?

Do you make on-screen PDFs for widespread circulation? What are they for? How do you make them and what sort of extra functionality do they have? Do you have any more “rules” to add to mine?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I’ve noticed a trend emerge recently. A client of mine got me to design an invitation to a marketing event – cocktails at a new store – I sent him a beautifully designed invite in the form or a PDF and asked him how many he needed printed and he said: “Oh, there’s no need, I’m sending the PDF by email”.

More and more of this will be happening in the future. If this widely-predicted recession actually takes hold, marketing managers can tighten there budgets by sacrificing digital print for digital communication.

It’s another benefit of the interactive PDF. Why go to the expense of printing something when you can email a PDF? They look good, the file size is low enough not to bother the receiver and, let’s face it, it’s more likely to be seen than if it was sent in the post.

There are various other ways of side-stepping a printer. There’s html emails, although care should be taken that they’re not seen as spam. And there’s one-off web pages – if you’re very worried about spam filters simply put a link in your email. A new domain can be set up in seconds for next to nothing. Simply create a site at www dot something-interesting-that-hasn’t-been-thought-of-yet dot com and design an eye-catching splash page. Use web stats and forms to see if visitors have landed.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.