This InDesign tip on using bookmarks to navigate in InDesign documents was sent to Tip of the Week email subscribers on April 6, 2017.
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When you’re working with very long documents, it can be a pain just to find the content you need to work on—especially if you’re not sure of the page number, and there are no section starts or other distinguishing marks in the Layers panel page thumbnails to help you.
One thing that might help in this situation is bookmarks (Window > Interactive > Bookmarks). Usually, you’d use bookmarks to add navigation elements to an exported PDF, but they work just as well right inside InDesign. So the next time you’re on a page that you think you might have trouble finding your way back to, place a bookmark there and give it a descriptive name.
To jump immediately to that page, double-click its bookmark in the panel.
You can also hover your cursor over the bookmark to see the page number.
The bookmarks don’t have to be in the same order as the pages they represent. Drag them to rearrange them in order of priority, or group certain reminders, and so on.
Just be sure to NOT include the bookmarks in any exports.
This article was last modified on July 25, 2019
This article was first published on April 11, 2017
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