LaTeX – How to Create a Table of Contents for Merged PDF Files Using LaTeX

bookmarkspdftable of contents

I have a set of pdf files which I want to merge into a larger pdf files. Each individual pdf file is an article with sections. I am hoping to make the merged pdf file into a book format with each article being a chapter, whose sections and subsections correspond to that of the individual chapter.

What I need is a table of contents page which shows the chapters, the sections, and subsections and links to them with this table of contents page being displayed in the sidebar of a pdf reader such as evince (which calls it an index).

What I have right now:

\documentclass{report}
\author{<somename>}
\title{<sometitle>}
\date{<somedate>}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage[pdfauthor={<somename>},%
        pdftitle={<sometitle>},%
        pdftex]{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents

\clearpage\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{<chaptername>}
\includepdf[pages=-,linktodoc=false]{file1.pdf}

\clearpage\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{<chaptername>}
\includepdf[pages=-,linktodoc=false]{file2.pdf}

\clearpage\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{<chaptername>}
\includepdf[pages=-,linktodoc=false]{file3.pdf}

\clearpage\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{<chaptername>}
\includepdf[pages=-,linktodoc=false]{file4.pdf}

\end{document}

Now file3.pdf and file4.pdf have sections and subsections in them. How do I display these sections and subsections in the table of contents and link from there to the actual page? (And I also would like this info to be displayed in the sidebar of a pdf reader such as evince).

Best Answer

The entries in the "table of contents page [which is] being displayed in the sidebar of a pdf reader" are called PDF bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat. The hyperref and bookmark packages provide functionality to place own bookmarks into your PDF.

You should go for the bookmark package (which loads hyperref internally). It allows you to place links from the sidebar to specific pages of the current (or even an external) PDF with specific page, view port and zoom levels. You would need to collect the pages (and maybe zoom settings) for each (sub-)section by yourself if you don't have the LaTeX source of them.

An example for an bookmark entry which should appear in a certain hierarchy level and point to a certain page with a certain height (FitH) is:

\bookmark[level=<num>,page=<num>,view={FitH 842}]{<title>}

(See also the similar questions if you want to place links inside the document:
PDF hyperlinks to a given page.
pdfpages and linktodoc)

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Customize section numbering in TOC

It's definitely not a good idea to define \thesection with formatting instructions. Also, you want to have \thechapter to expand to \arabic{chapter}, so that you need to change its appearance only when typesetting the chapter head.

Here are some changes to your settings. However, I don't like at all the way section and subsection titles are set, but the document is yours.

No redefinition of \thechapter, \thesection and \thesubsection
The \@makechapterhead is patched to print \Ordinalstring{chapter} instead of \thechapter.
Some tidying of the code.

\documentclass[a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[scaled=0.92]{helvet}
\usepackage{mathptmx}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[tracking=true]{microtype}
\usepackage{fmtcount}

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\@makechapterhead}
  {\thechapter}
  {\Ordinalstring{chapter}}
  {}{}
\makeatother

\usepackage[rigidchapters,nobottomtitles*,pageatnewline]{titlesec}

\titlespacing*{\section}
              {0em}
              {2em}
              {0.5em}
\titlespacing*{\subsection}
              {0em}
              {2em}
              {0.5em}
\titleformat{\section}
            [display]
            {\fontencoding{T1}\fontfamily{phv}\fontsize{11pt}{13.2pt}\selectfont}
            {\thesection}
            {1ex}
            {}
            {}
\titleformat{\subsection}
            [display]
            {\fontencoding{T1}\fontfamily{phv}\fontsize{11pt}{13.2pt}\selectfont}
            {\thesubsection}
            {0em}
            {}
            {}
%
\usepackage{titletoc}
\titlecontents{chapter}
              [0em]
              {\bfseries}
              {Chapter \thecontentslabel\\*\hspace*{.7em}}
              {}
              {\hfill\contentspage}
\titlecontents{section}
              [1.5em]
              {}
              {{\sffamily\thecontentslabel}\\*\hspace*{.7em}}
              {}
              {\titlerule*[.5pc]{.}\contentspage}
\titlecontents*{subsection}
              [3.8em]
              {}
              {{\sffamily\thecontentslabel}\\*\hspace*{.7em}}
              {}
              {\titlerule*[.5pc]{.}\contentspage}
%

\begin{document}
\chapter{Foo}

\lipsum[1]

\section{Bar}

\lipsum[2]

\subsection{Qux}

\lipsum[3]

\section{Quux}

\lipsum[4]

\subsection{Quux1}

\lipsum[5]

\chapter{foo}

\section{bar}

\lipsum[4]

\subsection{qux}

\lipsum[5]

\tableofcontents

\end{document}

enter image description here

Creating Table of Contents for Set of PDF Files

This is adapted from some code I wrote once for a similar purpose. You simply call the macro \insertmydocument instead of \includepdf.

For the description, it turns out tocloft can handle the typesetting of a "chapter precis" in toc, in text or both. It seems to be exactly what you are looking for.

%The default settings should add dots, but for whatever reason it doesn't. This fixes it.
\renewcommand{\cftchapleader}{\cftdotsfill{\cftchapdotsep}}

\newcommand{\insertmydocument}[4]%
           { % Syntax: \insertmydocument{Toc level}{Title}{Subtitle}{File}
             % Requires: tocloft hyperref pdfpages
             \newpage
             \phantomsection
             \cftaddtitleline{toc}{#1}{#2}{\thepage}
             \cftchapterprecistoc{#3}
             \includepdf[pages=-]{#4}
           }

I suggest you add colorlink to the hyperref options, so that the links are colored instead of boxed. This will get rid of the big box on the first line.

Full example

\documentclass{report}

\usepackage{pdfpages}

\usepackage{tocloft}

\renewcommand{\cftchapleader}{\cftdotfill{\cftdotsep}}

\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}


\newcommand{\insertmydocument}[4]%
           { % Syntax: \insertmydocument{Toc level}{Title}{Subtitle}{File}
             % Requires: tocloft hyperref pdfpages
             \newpage
             \phantomsection
             \cftaddtitleline{toc}{#1}{#2}{\thepage}
             \cftchapterprecistoc{#3}
            \includepdf[pages=-]{#4}
           }


\begin{document}


\tableofcontents

\chapter{A regular chapter}

\insertmydocument{chapter}{A pdf}{Description}{document.pdf}

\chapter{Another chapter}

\end{document}