I am writing a technical manual. There are 6 chapters, each with its own TOC. There is a beginning section (let's call it Chapter 0) with the title pages, names of writers, and overall TOC. Each of these 7 chapters is its own document (necessary to make the TOCs read the page number as [chapter number]-[page number] (ex: 3-2 is the second page of Chapter 3) as well as making production a lot easier). I have the overall TOC in Chapter 0 set up to reference the other 6 documents and build automatically.



It's beautiful. The whole thing. I'm very proud of it. My last step is delivering it to the client as a single PDF, and that's where I'm having trouble.

When I save each chapter individually as a PDF through Word, Word maintains my TOC links so they are clickable within each chapter (ex: I can go to the TOC for Chapter 3 at the beginning of that chapter, click on section 3.5.4.2, and it takes me to that page). My problem is making the overall TOC in Chapter 0 clickable in the same way so that it can also take me to section 3.5.4.2. This appears to not work for the simple reason that they are separate documents only tied together by the code in the Chapter 0 TOC.

Is there a way to make this happen without manually making the PDF text a clickable link in Adobe or Bluebeam each time I create another PDF version? Is this only possible if the entire manual exists as a single document? Any easy way to do this while still maintaining all of the section breaks and chapter page numbering (without completely redoing the formatting I've already created)?

Thank you for any help you can provide!

-J

Edit: It looks like I originally selected the wrong version of Office for my profile. I've corrected it to read 2013, but that doesn't appear to update the information listed above.

Anyone? Anyone at all? Am I not getting responses, because it's not possible? Too complex a description?

Seriously, any help (even someone saying to just do it manually, because it's impossible) would be very much appreciated.

Use Chapter page numbering and put it all in one document. You can have tables of contents that are restricted to selected text.

How to number headings and figures in Appendixes in Microsoft Word by Shauna Kelly
TOC Tips and Tricks

Thank you for the response!

Once I add a bookmark into the document for the chapter TOCs, will this be able to easily include additional information added within and beyond the section?

I am passing this completely to the client after submittal and would like any revisions they make (to this manual with my name on it) in coming years to work correctly within the document.

The TOC tied to bookmarked area can be updated for the bookmarked area but not for beyond the section unless "beyond the section" in included in the bookmark. You can have an overall TOC that is for the entire document.

Good luck with that! Word is a deceptively complex program. People without training (or even with it) can mess up complex documents very easily. Complex Documents

I thought you were submitting it as pdf. pdf does not use the TOC field, it has the linked text. If they open the pdf in Word to edit it they will have a real mishmash.

The PDF submission is probably unnecessary now that I've gotten the TOCs all working in one document, but they want the PDF to post to the website and the Word doc to make revisions in the future.

Thanks for the help!