I print PDF versions of T1s and T2s for my clients. They really appreciate bookmarks in the PDFs so they can jump to a certain section of the tax return (Ex. T2125 in the T1) instead of scanning through all the pages of the tax return. My previous tax software (Profile) provided an option to print PDFs with bookmarks of every schedule assigned to be printed. The bookmark’s title would match the header of the tax schedule (T2125 - Statement of Business or Professional Activities).
Would this feature be available in a future release of Taxcycle?
As @BertMulderCGA says, we’ve supported that for a long time… when you choose the printer to print from, make sure to select “Adobe PDF”, which is the PDF driver we bundle with TaxCycle. You won’t get the bookmarks if you select CutePDF or any other PDF printer from the dropdown.
Thanks Cameron. I was unaware (aka. not in the user guide) that I had to change my default Adobe Acrobat Professional program to TaxCycle’s Adobe Acrobat driver. I tried to address this issue with one of your members through telephone support but they couldn’t solve the issue. The user guide addresses ‘bookmarks’ only once in the 76 page user guide. As a new user of TaxCycle of less than three months, I believe I’ve done my due diligence to raise this suggestion to return to prompt yet an unwelcoming comment. I was eager to enroll in your TaxCycle tour in Vancouver coming in January but will now reconsider.
Thanks. Please close this discussion. Issue solved.
Apologies, I didn’t intend to offend. I’ve been rushing today in hopes of wrapping up early to get home for my daughter’s 7th birthday, and was too abrupt in my efforts to be prompt and efficient.
I had the same problem when I started using Taxcycle. I initially setup the program using my standard PDF program not knowing that there was an adobe pdf installed with Taxcycle. maybe you should consider adding an information popup if someone tries to use a pdf program other than your version on when setting up the printer settings (with the option to turn if off of course)
The second printer is always Adobe PDF printer we install. The 3rd and subsequent printers that show in this list are the ones that Windows gives us.
In your case, you must have another Adobe PDF printer installed.
I’d love to make this clearer, but the printers we get back from windows do not report what type of printer they are. I suppose we could assume that if PDF is in the name, it’s an aftermarket PDF printer, but that might not always be true. And how do you spell PDF in French??
Thank you for the “Adobe PDF - Bookmarks” printer description in the list of Taxcycle printers Cam.
It seems I have a bit of a different issue with Taxcycle PDF files. I believe I have the correct PDF printer selected (Adobe PDF - Bookmarks) according to the above, however, my PDF renderings do not automatically show any of the bookmarks.
In order to have the bookmarks display in any of my PDF viewers, I need to open the newly created Taxcycle PDF file in Adobe Acrobat, select "File–>Properties—>Initial View—>Layout and Magnification–>Navigation Tab and change that from “Page Only” to “Bookmarks Panel and Page”. After that I need to “save” the file. Only after saving, closing and and re-opening the file do the Bookmarks now work (in any pdf viewer).
After all this, the file now opens fine with the bookmarks being displayed. Unfortunately, as soon as you click on any of the bookmarks the pages shrink to about 75% (fit to page) even though I have all my readers set to 125% magnification. I can’t see as well as I did 10 years ago.
I can’t say whether this started happening when I downloaded the updated version today or whether it was like that for a while. This behavior seems only to be happening with PDF files created with Taxcycle.
Thanks for the feedback @snoplowguy. We’ve just taken a look at this. Here’s what I can tell you (our developer will likely respond to you too in a private message):
We’ve fixed the issue where clicking on a bookmark changes the magnification. That should be in our automatic update coming out shortly.
If we’re understanding the other issue you describe, it’s not that the bookmarks don’t work, but that the side panel with list of bookmarks doesn’t display by default when you open the file. We’re looking into adding a setting in the print/pdf to allow you decide whether you want to display this or not (this might also let you set the default magnification too). That will take a little longer to sort out. If we have misunderstood the problem, let us know.
Thank you for your reply Elizabeth, and thank you for quickly addressing the issue with the zoom.
With regard to the “bookmark” issue I have sent you an email containing a T1 pdf attachment. You are correct in your understanding that when I open a pdf file (T1 or T2) that has been created by Taxcycle, the side panel containing the bookmarks appears to be totally missing from the rendering as if a default is set somewhere to not have the bookmarks display on open.
I can manually change the default in each individual pdf file such that the bookmark bar does open with the file in future, but I need to make that change using something like Adobe Acrobat ("File–>Properties—>Initial View—>Layout and Magnification–>Navigation Tab and change that from “Page Only” to “Bookmarks Panel and Page”) and then save each individual file. After doing this, the next time the file is opened, it automatically opens with the bookmarks bar visible. The time consuming part about this would be that I would have to perform those steps on every pdf that Taxcycle produced.
I don’t know that we would need a setting to allow the user to decide whether or not to display the bookmarks bar on open, as I would think that most of your users would agree the bookmarks bar should automatically display on open by default and they could close it in their pdf reader if they wished. The problem with the bookmarks not opening by default is many users would not know bookmarks even existed for that file.
In my experience, I’d hesitate to suggest that tax preparers would agree on anything! We think that an option (by print set) is required because you may not want the bookmarks to show by default if you are sending off something like an engagement letter or a single T4 slip. Regardless, we’ll make your suggestions the default, and add the ability to change those settings on a print set by print set basis as required. Expect to see this sometime before the end of November.
Here’s how it lays out in new options we’re testing now. You’ll probably show the bookmarks when printing a full return, but you may not when printing just an engagement letter or a single T4 slip…
We think that an option (by print set) is required because you may not want the bookmarks to show by default if you are sending off something like an engagement letter or a single T4 slip. Regardless, we’ll make your suggestions the default, and add the ability to change those settings on a print set by print set basis as required. Expect to see this sometime before the end of November.