Having a technique to quickly find and display a document within a bundle PDF, by searching for a string of letters/numbers in its bookmark, can be important, so that you don't lose the thread, if you are having to read one document and constantly refer back and forth to other documents within the PDF as you see them mentioned.
Ideally each document will be referred to - e.g. in statements - by a distinctive exhibit mark or other reference consisting of a string of letters and ending with numbers such as JJS21 or App-A2 and the referred-to document will have that same series of letters and numbers in its bookmark.
Quickly finding and displaying the first page of a document within a bundle PDF by doing a "Find" for its bookmark is easier with some PDF software than with others.
The best software to use is probably PDF X-Change Editor.
First of all bring up the Find panel, tap the More Options icon and tick Whole Words and Include Bookmarks and untick Include Page Text - you only have to do this once.
Double click on the reference word in the page of the statement to highlight it.
Tap CTRL-F. This brings up the Find box with the highlighted text already in the box.
Tap Enter
After looking at the document which has been found (the document with the reference word in its bookmark) the user can then hold Alt and tap left arrow (or tap the Previous View button) as many times as is necessary to return to the page of the statement and continue reading.
Note 1 If the referred to-document is more than a single page and you do some scrolling you may find that you have to press the Previous View button many times to get back to the original statement and, if you have spent some time reading and concentrating on the referred-to document, it might not be straightforward to remember and recognise, as you retrace your steps, when you have got back to the original statement containing the reference which you followed. If you find it easier you can, just before double-clicking on the reference word in a paragraph (step 1 above), double-click on the paragraph number and tap the New Destination button. Then, later on when you come to retrace your steps you can go to the Destinations pane and double click on the last listed destination (which shows the page number and paragraph number in the original statement) to go straight back to the original page in one go without having to tap Previous View multiple times.
Note 2 If you are using the hand tool to page up and down on a touchscreen, you should choose the option which allows the hand tool to also select text so that you are able to go easily between selecting a reference word and scrolling pages. To do this you tap Format and choose select text/images.
Note 3 To make the process slightly smoother you can assign a one-key shortcut (such as the TAB key) to Find so that you can tap TAB instead of CTRL-F.
You might come across the situation where one or more statements use references which are not sufficiently distinctive. For example a Statement of Case might not have unique document references in the text but just have a numbered list of the documents referred to at the end. Or a Statement of Case might refer to documents in the text just by a number 1, 2, 3, etc. (there might be a prefix such as Ref or Doc but there is a space between that and the number so that it is the number alone which would be highlighted by a double click). In these cases identifying the target documents just by having a digit in their bookmarks would not be satisfactory.
One solution to this problem is for the person producing the eBundle to use a prefix to ensure that a suitable unique reference is included in the bookmark name of each referred-to document. In order to be unique each reference will need to include some string of letters/digits which identify the statement followed by the reference used in the statement.
For example If the Respondent's statement of case has just a numbered list of the documents referred to at the end, or if it refers to documents in the text just by a number 1, 2, 3, etc., you could use the references Resp-1 Resp-2 Resp-3 etc. in bookmarks. Then you would add a note page just before the Respondent's statement of case explaining that document number 1 in the statement has Resp-1 in its bookmark, document number 2 has Resp-2 in its bookmark, etc. and explaining how to use PDF software to quickly locate documents using the Find function.
In this kind of situation there are three possible approaches to finding documents:
You can use the double click and two taps approach explained above. This won't necessarily bring up the correct document as the first hit, but you can then tap the Go to Next Entry arrow in the Find box to go through the hits until you reach the bookmark with the reference you are looking for.
You could type in to the Find box the full string used in bookmarks e.g. Resp -2 You would lose a second or two doing the typing but it would mean that the Find would take you straight to the document.
If references in bookmarks are more complex such as JS-Resp-3 you could still type in just Resp-3- and this would work with probably only a couple of hits to check. This works even with the Whole Words option because a hyphen is not considered to be a word character.
PDF X-Change Editor is generally the best PDF software to use but it is not free. A free alternative is Foxit PDF Reader which can be downloaded from www.foxit.com/pdf-reader
Unlike PDF X-Change Editor, Foxit does not pre-populate the Search box with the selected text. It is possible to do a copy/paste but it is probably easier not to select the reference text at all and to simply type in the reference text into the Find box in the bookmarks panel, particularly as, since there is no "whole words" option for bookmark finds, you may need, if you are searching for a word with a single digit (e.g. JJS2), to type in a space or hyphen of whatever follows the single digit to reduce the number of hits (to avoid hitting JJS21 JJS22 JJS23 etc.).
Once you have typed into the bookmark Find box, the hits will automatically appear and you need to tap on the relevant bookmark to go to the referred-to document.
Once you have looked at the referred-to document you can return to the page of the document you are reading (the document which had the reference that you followed) by tapping the Previous View button (or by holding Alt and tapping the left hand arrow button) several times to undo the previous navigation actions.
It is possible to use Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is also free) but it is not easy and it is better to use one of the above instead. If you do decide to use Adobe Acrobat Reader, you have to do the following every time:
Tap Ctrl-Shift-F and, in the Search panel, make sure Include Bookmarks and Whole Words Only are ticked (they should be if you ticked them last time).
Type in the reference you are looking for and tap Enter. The search will then start showing hits in the Search panel as it proceeds. It will search for occurrences of the reference in bookmarks first and then go on to search for occurrences of the reference in text (it would normally be only bookmarks you want to search but there is no "bookmarks only" option in Search so you have to do a search for both bookmarks and text).
If the reference only appears in one bookmark that bookmark should be highlighted in the bookmark panel and you can tap on it to go to the document - you don't need to wait until the search has finished searching text. If the Search finds the reference in more than one bookmark then the bookmarks may not be automatically highlighted in the Bookmarks panel and you then need to go to the top of the search results in the Search panel and select a particular bookmark hit to get the bookmark to appear in the Bookmarks panel, then hit the bookmark to go to the document.
Once you have looked at the referred-to document you can return to the page of the document you are reading (the document which had the reference that you followed) by holding Alt and tapping the left hand arrow button several times to undo the previous navigation actions.
You cannot directly do a bookmark find using a browser such as Chrome as browsers generally only allow you to do a Find for text, not bookmarks. However if the bundle PDF has index pages at the start, matching the bookmarks, a text Find should find a match in the index and you can then tap on the index entry which should be hyperlinked to the document in question. Browsers do not usually have a "whole words" option so you always need to type in a space or hyphen or whatever follows, if you are searching for a word with a single digit (e.g. JJS2), to reduce the number of hits (to avoid hitting JJS21 JJS22 JJS23 etc.).
Browsers do not usually have the ability to undo navigation steps when reading PDFs so there is no button to take you back to where you were just before you did the Find. The only way to get back is to make a note of the page number you are on just before doing the Find so that you can go back to that page number.
Disclaimer
This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.
The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.
This page was lasted updated in October 2025. Disclaimer