Problem with orphand anchors (was: Totally scrambled PDF Bookmarks)

[max1josef]

I observed the following problem with PDF bookmarks: if you make changes to your headings, the old versions of your headings still appear as bookmarks.

In the screenshot you see the Table of content, which is correct. The first part of the PDF-bookmarks on the left is also correct, but the additional entries are all referring to old versions of the headings. Observe for instance the bookmark "This heading once had another text" in the attached example.

I tried to delete and recreate the Tabele of contents and temporarily disabled and reenabled bookmark creation on export - no help.

BTW, I'm using the standard preset "PDF (for export)" and my Publisher version is 1.9.2.1035 on Windows 10.

I posted this already in other threads, but it didn't draw attention. In the meantime (after editing my document several times, changing headings) the situation got worse. The PDF bookmarks are totally scrambled now and do not resemble the document structure anymore.

Bookmark-Problem.afpub

Bookmark-Problem.pdf 58.15 kB · 1 download

[Jon P]

Hi @max1josef,

As you've noted there's definitely some old pdf anchors that have been created that don't seem to have been removed/updated when you updated the ToC.

If you go to View > Studio > Anchors you can see a lot of the old entries that weren't cleared. I cleared these all up and then re-generated the ToC, all the pdf bookmarks (that will show in the Anchor panel) were generated correctly and it seems to be working as expected when exported.

I'm struggling to reproduce getting a file into this way from scratch though, when I change a headings text and update the Table of Contents the bookmarks seems to update and not leave old the ones behind

[max1josef]

Hi Jon P,

so the problem is not related to PDF bookmarks but to the creation of anchors (some steps before)

Your method of deleting all anchors and re-generating the ToC worked for me, too.

But still, when I modify a heading and then re-generate the ToC, the old anchor persists. I have to delete it manually again.

So I started a completely new, even simpler test file from scratch with current version 1.9.2. Maybe you can reproduce this by the following steps:

1. The only text I inserted was "This is a heading", formatted with template "heading 1"
2. I added a ToC (making sure "include entries before TOC" is checked)
3. The anchors plane shows one anchor "This is a heading" (which is correct)
4. Then I altered the text from "This is a heading" to "This is another heading"
5. I updated the ToC
6. Now the achors plane shows two entries (see screenshot), one of which is an "orphan".

 

So I think, the problem is clearly identified: when changing a heading and updating the ToC, the anchor pointing towards the old entry should be deleted automatically. Most of the time one would not notice this error (the orphaned anchors won't "hurt"), but when they are exported as PDF bookmarks, it starts to become a problem.

Anchor problem.afpub

[Jon P]

Ah thanks @max1josef,

I was deleting all of the text during step 4, which was deleting the anchor as I would expect. If I just append onto the current text and update the ToC the old anchor still exists, which is indeed a bug.

I'll get this recipe passed on!

[SilvRO]

Hello,

I have the same issue but some anchor are impossible to delete or "PDF toggle" in the Anchor Studio. And some of them cannot be updated (the old versions that are not cleared when TOC is updating).

The only thing I do is trying to custom the style of the TOC. Then to remove Bookmark.

I use the 1.9.2.1035 version on Windows 10 Pro 20H2

2021-04_Optymisons-le-Lion__BUG-Bookmark.afpub