Creating PDF book with navigable table of contents

oneadem · December 8, 2015, 4:19pm

Can Scrivener create a PDF file whose table of contents (TOC) is navigable? For example, clicking “Chapter 3” takes reader to Chapter 3?

I tried to export as PDF and it creates TOC as text only (no hyperlinks). The same project file produces navigable TOC on epub and mobi files just fine.

Can’t find anything on this online or in the For Dummies book.

Any idea how to do this?

AmberV · December 8, 2015, 9:57pm

Chapter 22 in the user manual should explain the conditions necessary for creating a clickable ToC. From the first page of that chapter:

Feature not working as intended? You must have a compatible version of Microsoft Office installed for Scrivener to generate cross-references correctly in PDF and DOC format files (note that ODT does not support this feature, you should use RTF or DOC instead if you need a ToC or cross-references in general, with LibreOffice). RTF should be a safe format to use as we can build that ourselves in the software, but for these more complicated formats, we need an external library to help with the conversion. Office versions 2007 through 2013 will suffice. Older or more recent versions lack third-party integration support. If you do not have access or cannot install one of these versions of Office, use RTF, or create your table of contents after compiling, using the word processor of your choice.

oneadem · December 9, 2015, 3:38am

I read all that. what I thought Scrivener could do is ourput a PDF book that people could open in Acrobat and navigate through via the TOC. My searching seems to indicate that it can not.

AmberV · December 9, 2015, 10:11pm

Have you checked your preferences for import/export settings, to ensure the Word libraries are being used for PDF export/compile? If you don’t even see a PDF option as an export converter, then it is going to use a lower quality PDF engine that isn’t capable of hyperlinking. To be clear, we designed PDF to be used for simple proofing and printing, not post-production book design. There are far better tools for that, but even just compiling as RTF and loading that in LibreOffice 5, using its PDF export feature, will give you an easy way to make a PDF.