Cleanup Links and Bookmarks

Overview

Cleanup Links And Bookmarks scans the active PDF to detect and fix broken or invalid links and bookmarks. You can convert file paths, remove bad entries, and generate a report of what was found and fixed. The same dialog is also used in Report Only mode (Create Link Report), which detects issues without deleting anything.

How to use

  1. Open the PDF you want to clean up.
  2. Go to Plug-Ins > Links > Cleanup Links And Bookmarks.
  3. Select the cleanup actions you want to perform.
  4. Choose the page scope and reporting options.
  5. Click OK to run the cleanup.

Cleanup actions

OptionDescription
Convert absolute paths to relative Rewrites absolute file references in link actions to be relative to the PDF’s location. Use Select All or Clear All to quickly toggle all options.
Delete links without actions Removes link annotations that have no assigned action.
Delete links to missing targets Removes link annotations that point to non-existent files, pages, URLs, or named destinations.
Delete bookmarks to missing targets Removes bookmarks with invalid destinations (missing files or pages). Only leaf bookmarks are deleted.

Page scope

OptionDescription
Custom page range Process only the pages specified as a comma-separated list with optional ranges, e.g. 1-3,5,8-10.
Current page Process only the currently viewed page.
From page ... to page / end of file Process a contiguous range of pages. Choose To page to specify an end page, or To end of file to process through to the last page.

Reporting

OptionDescription
Show report in viewer When enabled, opens the cleanup report in your external viewer after processing completes. The report format dropdown is only enabled when this option is checked.
Report format Choose between Text or HTML output for the report.

Tip

Use Create Link Report (the report-only variant of this dialog) to audit your document before committing to any deletions. It runs the same checks but never modifies the PDF.

Note

Deleting invalid links or bookmarks is permanent. Consider saving a backup of the document before running cleanup. Invalid page ranges are rejected before processing begins.

See also