How To Add Navigation To An Interactive PDF In Adobe InDesign CC

Hi there, in this video we're going to make our Navigation. Like this one in the side here, for an interactive PDF. When you click on 'Tables', jumps to the Tables page and then the Chairs page, and then the Shelves. You know how navigation works but you might not know how to create it in InDesign so let's go and learn how to do that now.

So to get the navigation to work I'm going to have the navigation on every page, so it's a good idea to put it on the Master page. So I'm going to go to my 'Pages' panel, I'm going to go to 'A-Master', double click it. And what I want to do is, if I put it in here now, it's going to be at the bottom of my layers, especially on page 1, where I've got that-- whereas this big image here, it's not going to appear on top, it's going to appear below. So on the A-Master, I'm going to go to my Layers panel, and we haven't got any other layers, but Layer 1. I'm going to rename Layer 1, this is going to be called 'Main Content'. That's where everything goes at the moment. I'm going to make a new layer. Double click it, I'm going to call this one 'Navigation'. That's the one I'm going to work on. You just need to make sure it's blue and highlighted. I can close it back in there.

Now what I'm going to do is make, kind of a ribbon navigation, like we saw. You can draw any which way you like, I'm going to do it-- I'm going to hit the 'W' key, so I'm not in preview. I'm going to grab the Rectangle tool, and I'll pick a Fill color of 'Maynooth'. I'm going to pickle through all of them, so I'll start with the 'Green'. I'm going to draw out a box, like this. And to get that little divot in, there's a couple of ways. I'm going to use the method where, where I use the Pen tool. There's one that says 'Add Anchor Point'. Click on that, so I've held down the Pen tool, grabbed 'Add Anchor Point', I'm going to hover somewhere in the middle, close-ish, so I've got another little Anchor Point.

Now to move that little point around I use the White Arrow. So the White Arrow, I'm going to click it once, click off, click it once again, you can see now, this one's red, and all the rest of them are white. So you might have to click off, click back on again just so that one is selected. I'm going to zoom in a little bit. I'm just going to click, hold, and drag it in. Great! I'm going to grab the Type tool. Draw out a box, and this one's going to be called 'Tables'. And I click 'White', 'Paper'. So we've built some sort of navigation, doesn't really matter what. Actually what I might do, just put my Text box in there, and make it centered, so back to the Type tool, make it centered because I'm going to adjust this for all the front navigation options. Centered might help.

So I've got these two, I've selected both of them. I'm going to copy them. Holding the 'Alt' and dragging. You can just copy and paste them. This one's going to be 'Chairs', that's why I did centered. So that will kind of just end up being centered. And I will do a third option, this one is going to be 'Shelves'. Exciting! Let's do the colors. You are going to be, and these guys are going to go on to the Nav. Nice. Pink. You, be the purple. For this to work properly as well, I need to group these two. So I've selected both of them, Black Arrow, I've gone 'Command G' or 'Object', 'Group'. 'Command G', or 'Control G' on a PC, just to group them together. Let's have a look at our pages now.

Because we're working on our Layers panel, remember, on this top layer, everything should be on top. So what I'm going to do is jump to 'Pages' panel, double click 'Page 1' There's my Title, close it in, it's in there? So in all the pages I got this navigation. Obviously you can add your navigation anywhere. Now what I want to do is go back to my A-Master, so I double click in here and let's add the Interactivity term. To do it we need to open up this 'Hyperlinks' panel. If you can't find it in there just go to 'Window', 'Interactive', and there's one in there called 'Hyperlinks'. And what I need to do is click on this guy, and in this hyperlink, I want to click on him. Now I want to say, I want you to go to Page. What page? I'm going to get it to go to, I can't remember. Tables, I think is the first page, well my first kind of text page, which is Page 2. Chairs is, I have no idea, I got to recheck, but you get the idea, right?

So, this one's Tables, then Chairs, then Shelves. Can do, Dan. All right. So, with you selected, let's open up 'Hyperlinks'. I'm going to say, you go to page 3, and you go to page 4. Awesome! And because it's on the Master page, hopefully it's going to update on all the pages. Now this little feature works both, for interactive PDFs and also works for Publish Online, and EPUB, which is really handy. So it's kind of those ones that you can do-- it's going to work on all the format you can think of. Let's preview it.

So make sure my vision is closed in my Acrobat. So I've closed it down, I'm going to 'File', 'Export'. We'll give it the same name, 'Catalog'. 'Interactive' is the big part, click 'Save', replace the old one. And in here-- I'm going to turn off 'Show Full Screen' because it's annoying. Let's click 'Export'. The one thing you need to do is make sure that-- this is 'Include All'. That's one thing that can get turned off occasionally, so just make sure it's on. Let's click 'Export'. 'Overset text', I'm okay with that. And now, hopefully, Chairs, Tables, Shelves. So navigation and hyperlinks work perfect in interactive PDFs. It doesn't have to be full screen, like our Page Transitions but it works in all the other formats as well, Publish Online, and EPUB.

So that's going to be it for Interactive PDF. There's not a lot you can do that is consistent across lots of readers. So that is the problem with Interactive PDF, just do basic stuff. One of the things we haven't done here is Forms. I know it's kind of interactive but it's got its own section in this video course, so go check that out. All right, on to the next video.