InDesign

Tag page items

You can tag text frames and graphics automatically or manually. After you tag page items, you can use the Structure pane to change the order of your page by dragging elements to a new location within the hierarchy. If you change the order of the elements in the Structure pane, these changes are passed on to the Adobe PDF file. The order of the elements becomes useful when the PDF file is saved from Acrobat as an HTML or XML file.

Tag page items automatically

When you choose the Add Untagged Items command, InDesign adds tags to the Tags panel, and applies the Story and Figure tags to certain untagged page items. The Story tag is applied to any untagged text frames, and the Figure tag is applied to any untagged graphics. You can then manually apply other tags to sections of text. However, automatically tagging page items does not guarantee that the items will be structured accordingly in the exported PDF file.

  1. Choose Window > Tags to display the Tags panel.
  2. Choose View > Structure > Show Structure to display the Structure pane, to the left of the Document window.
  3. Choose Add Untagged Items from the Structure pane menu.
    Tags in the Structure pane and Tags panel

Tag page items manually

  1. Choose Window > Tags to display the Tags panel.
  2. Choose View > Structure > Show Structure to display the Structure pane, to the left of the Document window.
  3. Choose Add Untagged Items from the Structure pane menu.
  4. Select a page item in the document.
  5. Select a tag in the Tags panel. Note the following suggested uses for certain imported tags:
    Artifact
    The Artifact tag lets you hide page items, such as page numbers or unimportant objects, when viewing the exported PDF file in Reflow view, which displays only tagged items; see your Adobe Acrobat documentation. This is especially useful for viewing PDF files on a handheld device or in other PDF readers.

    Cell
    Use this tag for table cells. For more information about tagging tables for export, see Tag items.

    Figure
    Use this tag for placed graphics. The Figure tag is applied to all untagged graphics placed in your document when you choose Add Untagged Items.

    Paragraph tags (P, H, H1–H6)
    These tags have no effect on the exported PDF text when viewed in Reflow view. However, they can be useful in some situations when exporting a PDF file to HTML format.

    Story
    Use this tag for stories. The Story tag is applied to all untagged text frames when you choose Add Untagged Items. For example, suppose you have an InDesign document formatted with three paragraph styles: Head1, Head2, and Body. First, map these paragraph styles to the H1, H2, and P tags, respectively. Next, export to PDF. Finally, when you export the PDF document to HTML or XML in Acrobat, the paragraphs tagged as H1, H2, and P will display appropriately (such as with large bold letters in H1) in a web browser. For information on exporting the PDF document to HTML or XML, see your Adobe Acrobat documentation.