Bookmark Words from List in PDF Documents

AutoBookmark™ plug-in for Adobe® Acrobat®

Introduction

When working with lengthy PDF documents—such as health care forms, legal agreements, or policy manuals—it can be difficult to navigate through important sections quickly. Traditional bookmarking tools often rely on text patterns, distinct formatting, or heading styles to identify where bookmarks should be placed. But what happens when the document doesn’t follow these conventions?

This tutorial introduces a practical method for bookmarking PDF documents based on a custom list of words or sentences you define. Instead of relying on special fonts, sizes, or styles, this approach allows you to specify keywords (for example, “Patient Information” or “Terms and Conditions”) that serve as anchor points for bookmarks. The software then scans the document for these exact matches and automatically creates bookmarks, saving you the time and effort of manually searching and marking each location.

This technique is especially useful for professionals who work with standardized documents where section titles blend in with body text, yet still need a reliable way to organize and access key sections at a glance.

IMPORTANT: This operations works with searchable PDF files. If you are working with scanned paper documents, then make sure Recognize Text operation has been applied.

This operation is also available in the Guided Actions tool (aka Action Wizard) (Acrobat's batch processing tool) and can be used for automating of document processing workflows.

Prerequisites

• Adobe® Acrobat® Standard, Pro or Classic
• Microsoft Windows 11, 10, 8, Windows Server 2012-2022
• AutoBookmark™ Standard or Professional plug-in for Adobe® Acrobat®

Open a PDF File

Start the Adobe® Acrobat® application and open a PDF file using File > Open… menu.

Sample document that we are going to bookmark contains multiple sub-sections that use the same text style as the rest of the document. However, these sub-section titles use unique text that does not occur anywhere else in the document.

Open the "Bookmark Words From List" Dialog

Select Plugins > Bookmarks > Bookmark Words From List… to open the "Bookmark Words From List" dialog.

[⚡ How to locate Plugins menu in Adobe® Acrobat® ⚡]

Enter Words and Sentences to Bookmark

Type each word or phrase you want to bookmark on a separate line. Alternatively, use "Load From Text File..." to import search terms from a plain text file. Use "Save As Text..." to export search terms into a plain text file to reuse it later or share with co-workers.

Use any text editor (Notepad for example) to create a list of words or phrases to bookmark or type search terms directly in the text box.

In this example, we are going to bookmark the following phrases:

Select Matching Options

Select text matching options. In this example, the important options are Match text case and Skip non-unique bookmarks.

Run Bookmarking

Press OK button to start bookmarking. Bookmarks panel will be automatically open to show the bookmarks.

The resulting bookmarks will be at single level (no nested bookmarks).

Creating Multi-level Bookmarks

Now we are going to improve bookmarking results by adding nesting levels to the output bookmarks. Organizing PDF bookmarks into nested levels makes it much easier to see the overall structure of a document at a glance. Instead of scrolling through a long, flat list, you can expand or collapse sections, quickly drilling down from broad topics to detailed subsections. This not only keeps the bookmark panel tidy but also mirrors the logical flow of the document, making navigation faster and more intuitive.

We are going to use a special "nesting" keyword at the end of each bookmarking term to designate a desired nesting level. If this keyword is omitted then the bookmarks that match this term will be always created at the top level. The easiest method to specify a nesting level is to append N: keyword after the search term (separated with a semicolon). For example, use the following syntax to specify a nesting level 2 (second level of bookmarks): EMERGENCY CONTACTS;N:2

Here is our search list with nesting levels:

IMPORTANT: Make sure to check Use search keywords and options option. You would also need to delete any existing bookmarks if you want to re-run bookmarking process. New bookmarks are always added after the existing ones.

Run Bookmarking

Press OK button to start bookmarking. Bookmarks panel will be automatically open to show the bookmarks.

The output bookmarks will be organized into two levels. Note that PATIENT INFORMATION bookmark is located at the top-level with the rest of the bookmarks organized below it.

More Processing Options

Here is a list of other special keywords that can be used to fine-tune bookmarking process:

Load/Saving Settings

Use Load From Text and Save As Text buttons to save/load search text to/from a plain text file. Use this functionality to prepare search terms in another text editor.

Use Save Settings... and Load Settings... buttons to save/load all processing settings into special settings file. This functionality is convenient because it saves you from having to re-enter the same processing parameters every time you work with a new document. Once you’ve set up your preferences—such as custom words for bookmarks or output options—you can save them and reuse the exact same configuration later with just a click. This not only saves time but also ensures consistency, especially when you need to process multiple PDFs with the same setup.