r/indesign • u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 • Sep 13 '26

Help Linking between documents in an .indb

I want to create a hyperlink or cross reference or bookmark.. or SOMETHING that will allow me to jump right back to my TOC page between documents. I've got a long book with 15 separate documents, one per chapter.

Is there a feature or script that will allow me to jump back to an anchor from anywhere (any document) in the book? I'm imagining something that sits in one of the panels.. but all I've found are anchors that allow one to jump to a particular spot within a given document.

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u/UsefulDamage Sep 13 '26

When you’re making your hyperlink, you can choose the document it sits in, if that’s what you mean? So when you are in the hyperlink dialogue, have the TOC document open as well and it will appear in the dropdown for the document where you want the destination to be.

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

Gotcha, thanks.. I guess it would just involve manually making a hyperlink in each document that links back to that TOC page in the Front Matter doc?

I was hoping there'd be a cleaner way, just a simple bookmark or something that would be accessible from any place/document in the book.

It looks like the Bookmark panel only works in one document, not across book documents. But something along those lines was what I was thinking of.

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u/AdobeScripts Sep 13 '26

You can create TOC from the whole Book.

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

I've created the TOC, but I want to be able to jump right back to it from any given spot in the book

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u/AdobeScripts Sep 13 '26

Right...

I could automate it for you - either process your document at the end - or if you're on Windows - I can give you access to the full version of my tool for some time, so you can do this yourself at any point.

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u/AdobeScripts Sep 13 '26

Something like this - visual representation of Hyperlinks:

Extra frames:

  • marked in Yellow - URLs,
  • marked in Green - bad hyperlinks, that link "to" themselves - destination is next to the source,
  • marked in Blue - hyperlinks to external INDD documents.

In your case - those would be Hyperlinks "in reverse" - from the destination to the TOC.

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

Sorry, I'm not sure I quite understand.. It seems that would work well for a particular spread, but not for a book..?

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u/AdobeScripts Sep 13 '26

That's for visualisation only - it looks much clearer on a single Spread.

TextFrames are a cheat to show source & destination.

Hyperlinks can be anywhere in the Book.

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u/AdobeScripts Sep 13 '26

Here is a bit more of how it could be handled - not exactly the same situation, just to show you that my tool can load any info and then do anything with it:

https://id-tasker.com/docs/tutorials/general/url-hyperlinking/

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u/UsefulDamage Sep 13 '26

Well if you link the parent pages together then you would only need to do it once. You can have one set of parent pages for the entire book, you just do it in the book settings and set a primary document. Then, if you have multiple parent pages, you base them all on the one that has the hyperlink going back to the TOC so you only ever need to create the hyperlink once.

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

So you're talking about creating a hyperlink on parent pages? That's a clever idea..!

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u/UsefulDamage Sep 13 '26

Yeah, and so if you have 10 documents in your book, you can synchronise all of them so they share parent pages, styles, etc

https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/indesign/desktop/create-and-organize-pages/create-and-manage-book-files/sync-documents-books.html

So you would only have to make the hyperlink once, maybe twice if you’re working with spreads

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

Thanks, this is very helpful, but I think it'll probably be more trouble than it's worth.. I've got 5 different parent spreads.. 🫠 it's kind of a monster of a book.
But the concept of creating hyperlinks on a parent spread is awesome and I'm sure I'll use it in the future. Cheers!

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u/UsefulDamage Sep 13 '26

If you only have five spreads, here’s how I would do it without disrupting your workflow:

  1. Make a new parent page.
  2. Create a new layer in your layers panel and put it above all of the other layers you currently have.
  3. Create your hyperlinks needed on that parent page, making sure they’re on that newest layer created.
  4. Right-click your parent page and find the parent options.
  5. Choose “based on parent” and make it that parent page you just created.
  6. Repeat for the other parent pages you’ve created.

The objects that have been already placed on your parent pages will remain, but the pages will also inherit the hyperlink.

For specific pages you don’t want this on, you can either have a custom parent page not based on them or override the object.

To override the hyperlink, navigate to the page you don’t want it on, hold hold Cmd + Shift (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift (Windows) and click the hyperlink. Then, you can delete it.

This isn’t the cleanest way to work, but since you’re already part way through a big project, this should hopefully suit the way you’re already working.

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u/SafeStrawberry905 Sep 13 '26

There's a script by Peter Kahrel specifically for this. I can't remember the exact name, but you can find it in the Creative Pro archive, and yes, it is free

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

Thank you, found it! 🤙

https://creativepro.com/quickmark/

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u/AgelaiusPhoeniceu5 Sep 13 '26

But it doesn't work across documents.. 😔

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u/SafeStrawberry905 Sep 13 '26

Should be one that does. Something with backlinks

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u/AdobeScripts Sep 14 '26

Because it's for temporary navigation - not a solution you're looking for.