A four-page brochure needs nothing more than the arrows. A 60-page catalog, a 120-page annual report or a product manual is different. Readers arrive looking for one thing, and if they have to flip through forty pages to find it, many of them give up first. Four tools fix that, and each one answers a different question.
| Tool | The reader is asking | Works best for |
|---|---|---|
| Table of contents | What is in here, and where? | Reports, manuals, magazines with sections |
| Thumbnails | Which page was the one with…? | Catalogs, lookbooks, portfolios |
| Search | Where does it mention this? | Price lists, manuals, technical documents |
| Page links | Can you send me straight to it? | Newsletters, sales emails, support replies |
The table of contents panel can be filled in three ways:
Bookmarks are the least work, as long as the PDF has them. In InDesign, tick Bookmarks in the PDF export dialog and they are taken from the document’s table of contents. In Word, choose Create bookmarks using Headings in the PDF options.
Make your own list when the PDF outline was written for print rather than for a screen: too deep, too sparse, or full of entries like “3.2.1” that mean nothing to someone browsing.
Two settings decide how the panel behaves:
Thumbnails are for documents people remember by sight. In a furniture catalog, readers look for “the blue sofa”, not “page 37”, and a grid of small pages gets them there faster than any list of headings.
The Mobile tab has its own thumbnails-on-start option, so the panel can open on desktop and stay closed on phones, where there is less room for it.
Search reads the text inside the PDF, so it only works when the PDF has real text. A scanned document is a picture of text: run it through OCR before you upload it. A quick test is to open the PDF in a desktop reader and try to select a word. If you can’t, readers won’t find it either.
Show search results as page thumbnails lists the matches as small pages instead of lines of text. In a catalog that is often more useful, because the reader can see which result is the product they want.
You can put a search button, or a search field, in the toolbar. For a price list or a manual, make it easy to see: for those documents, search is how most people will use the flipbook.
Text search is part of the PRO version. Lite vs PRO has the full comparison.
Deep linking gives every page its own address. Turn on Deep linking in the flipbook settings and the address in the browser changes as the reader turns pages. It ends in a hash made of a prefix and the page number. With the prefix set to catalog_, page 12 is #catalog_12.
Open a link that ends in that hash and the flipbook starts on that page. If the flipbook is set to open in a lightbox, the link opens the lightbox at that page.
Some places where that helps:
Set a Deep linking prefix of your own when a page holds more than one flipbook, so each link opens the right book. A short, readable prefix also makes the links easier to understand when people share them.
Two more settings help readers land in the right place. Start page opens the book on a page other than the cover, which suits a price list where the cover adds nothing. If the printed page numbers don’t start on the cover, Page number offset lines up the numbers the flipbook shows with the ones printed on the pages.
The PDF has no bookmarks and the pages have no titles. Export the PDF again with bookmarks, add page titles, or make a custom table of contents in the flipbook editor.
Usually because the PDF has no text layer: it was scanned, or the text was converted to outlines when it was exported. Run OCR on a scan, and export with live text instead of outlines.
Yes. A custom table of contents replaces the PDF outline, so you can rename, reorder or leave out entries without touching the PDF.
Yes. With deep linking turned on, the link opens the lightbox on that page.
Yes. The table of contents, thumbnails, search and page links are part of the toolbar, which is the same in every mode. See which flipbook view mode to use.
If the flipbook doesn’t exist yet, start with how to turn a PDF into a flipbook on WordPress. To decide where it goes on the page, see inline, lightbox or fullscreen.
No WordPress, Shopify or Wix? The JavaScript library puts the same flipbook on any page. A working example in a dozen lines, then lightbox, deep links, phone settings and the two errors almost everyone hits.
Photos, scans and exported pages can become a flipbook without a PDF. When images are the better choice, which sizes and formats to use, and what you give up.
Two ways to put a flipbook on an Elementor page. The Shortcode widget costs nothing, the addon gives you a widget with live preview. Plus how to open the book from your own button.
Catalogs, magazines and brochures with a realistic page flip, on WordPress, Shopify, Wix or any website.
