Help readers navigate your Pages documents with bookmarks and links

Having to tell readers to turn to a specific page for more information is now limited to printed documents. For those who work with digital text more often than not, the ability to click a link comes as second nature.

There’s no reason this shouldn’t be the case within your Pages documents either. By using the Bookmark and Hyperlink features in your Pages projects, you can quickly offer navigation around your document for those viewing it on a computer or mobile device. The process of implementing these links is relatively simple and, at its most basic level, requires you to set a launch and target point in your document via the Inspector pane. Unlike including a web URL as a link, however, with Bookmarks you can select specific passages of text or images in your document to link to.

Use links and bookmarks for document navigation.

In this tutorial we will show you how to bookmark sections in your document and then use the Hyperlink feature to link to them. Such additions to your document make for quick access and stress-free navigation. Moreover, these links can be used in a number of ways and in a variety of document types, from interactive stories to reports and forms.

In this example, we will simply add a link to a passage of text that refers to another section in our document. By bookmarking the target section you can then quickly apply a hyperlink to your reference text that, when clicked, takes the user to the bookmarked section it refers to.

These links remain when you export your document to Microsoft Word format (DOC), ePUB and as a PDF. This ensures that when you share your work, viewers can make just as much use of them.

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Use Links and Bookmarks for Document Navigation

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  Create Project

  Linking between sections requires a document of a fairly decent size (otherwise you’ll be pointing to elements within a few lines of the link). So open an existing document made up of at least a handful of pages or create one as we have here with our wildlife report.

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  Assign Target

  Locate the section you want to link to in your document and highlight the text. If it’s an image you want to link to, simply select the text closest to it. Now open the Inspector if it isn’t shown already and click on the Hyperlink tab. Click the Bookmark button under that tab.

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  Add Bookmark

  The bookmark pane will be blank to begin with, so click the plus (+) button at the bottom of the Inspector pane to add your new bookmark. It will be named using the text you selected but you can change the name by double-clicking the title and entering new text.

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  Bookmark Order

  Do the same for any other bookmarks you want to assign, selecting and adding them to the Inspector’s Bookmark pane. You can then order your bookmarks in this pane by clicking on Name or Page. Now head to the first word in your document that you want to use as a link.

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  Create Link

  Select the text you want to turn into a link and click the Hyperlink tab, then the Hyperlink button on the Inspector pane. Check Enable as a hyperlink. Select Bookmark from the Link To drop-down menu and select a bookmark to target in the Name drop-down.

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  Add More Links

  The link we just added sends readers to a section later in the document that was mentioned in the opening paragraph. The link takes readers directly to that section. Do the same to link to sections you have bookmarked at any point they are referenced in the text.

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  Test Links

  Once you’ve pointed all of your links to bookmarks, test them out to make sure they all go to the right place. Clicking on a link in your document will automatically take you to the bookmark it’s assigned to and you can also hover the cursor over a link to view its target.

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  Export and Share

  When you’ve finished creating links you can export your document in Microsoft Word format, as a PDF or as an ePUB book. These formats retain the links and allow users to navigate the document via a compatible PDF or ebook reader or text editor on their device.

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  Quick Tip

  Working with hyperlinks can be frustrating if you accidentally click on one. To avoid this, head to the Inspector’s Hyperlinks pane. Check Make all hyperlinks inactive to retain link data but not allow them to be clicked while you’re editing.

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