Messed up bookmarks in PDF

Question

I need to center the title of the parts in the toc. I'm trying these two approaches:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{tocloft}
\cftpagenumbersoff{part}
\begin{document}
    \tableofcontents
    \addcontentsline{toc}{part}{\centerline{Part A}}
    \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Section A}
    \addcontentsline{toc}{part}{\hfill{Part B}\hfill}
    \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Section B}
\end{document}

When the PDF is generated, the bookmarks have some of problems:

1. Part A appears in the bookmarks as "toPart A".
2. Part B appears hierarchically under Section A.
3. Part B appears correctly in the bookmarks, but it's not correctly centered in the page.

What can I do to solve this problem? Thank you!

Answer 1

\hfill or \centerline is no valid content for the bookmarks. Use \texorpdfstring{ToC content}{bookmark content}.

Also use the correct load order: tocloft, hyperref, bookmark to get the correct hierarchy.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tocloft}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{bookmark}
\cftpagenumbersoff{part}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{\texorpdfstring{\centerline {Part A}}{Part A}}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Section A}
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{\texorpdfstring{\centerline {Part B}}{Part B}}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Section B}
\end{document}

Answer 2

If you want a good bookmark hierarchy, you should add anchors. And imho the look of the part entries should be set through the tocloft commands:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tocloft}
\cftpagenumbersoff{part}

\renewcommand \cftpartfont     {\hfill}
\renewcommand \cftpartafterpnum{\hfill\mbox{}} 
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\tracingmacros=1
    \tableofcontents
    \phantomsection\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Part A}
    \phantomsection\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Section A}
    \phantomsection\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Part B}
    \phantomsection\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Section B}
\end{document}

Answer 3

\addcontentsline uses the latest anchor setting for the bookmark. The example of the question does not contain an explicit anchor setting for the \addcontentsline commands, therefore they all share the same latest anchor, in this case the anchor from the begin of the document.

The algorithm for the bookmarks does not work correctly, if there are several bookmarks that share the same anchor. This is fixed by adding package bookmark.

An anchor can be set by \phantomsection and it should be ensured that the location is correct, because this is the target of the bookmark. Often the following pattern can be seen:

\cleardoublepage
\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{...}
Part stuff.

---

Macros like \centerline that do not make sense and do not work in bookmarks can be globally disabled by \pdfstringdefDisableCommands, e.g.:

\pdfstringdefDisableCommands{\let\centerline\@firstofone}

However, \centerline does not look too good inside \addcontentsline. It usually better to change the layout of the table of contents instead ( (e.g. redefining \l@part or using a package that deals with the layout of the table of contents).