A large number of destination panes are saved

[gami]

I am saving PDF files to SharePoint for collaboration. The file became very large, so I checked and found that it was because a large number of destination panes were being saved. Is there a way to stop this from being created?

pain.jpg

[rakunavi]

Hello gami,

It appears that multiple attempts to copy pages from a document with named destinations, such as by dragging them via the Thumbnails pane, resulted in the unintentional addition of a large number of named destinations.

Since the behavior reported in the following topic seems to be the cause, in that case it is inevitable that every time a page is added from another document, a useless named destination is created. Personally, I don't see any benefit in this behavior at all, and I have been hoping for many years to have it improved as soon as possible.

• When copying a page between documents in the Thumbnails pane, all named destinations are merged unintentionally.
  viewtopic.php?t=37983

In the following video, pages are copied from one document to another, and the number of named destinations can be seen increasing at an accelerated rate. The same problem occurs when adding pages in ways other than copying between Thumbnails panes, for example, with the "Insert Pages (ページを挿入)" command from the Organize tab.

• Animation.gif

• SampleFiles.zip

I stopped halfway through the video, but you will see that if you repeat each copy operation up to 8 times, you can easily create even about the 1,295,520 named destinations you have shown in your figure.

• figure.png

Unnecessary named destinations that have already been created can be removed by selecting "Remove Invalid (無効な移動先の削除)" command from the Options menu in the Named Destinations pane.

Is there a way to stop this from being created?

If you copy and paste pages via the clipboard, rather than dragging pages between Thumbnails pane or using the "Insert Pages (ページを挿入)" command, the named destinations will not be copied. Currently, this seems to be the only workaround.

Best regards,
rakunavi

- PDF-XChange Editor PRO Version: 10.6.0 build 396
- OS Version: Windows 11 Pro / Home 24H2 Build 26100.4349
- PC Model: GMKtec Nucbox M7 Pro with HUION Kamvas Pro 19 / Lenovo IdeaPad C340-15IWL

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, rakunavi

You are not the only one.. I have put in a request to increase the priority on our existing ticket(s) relating to destination handling in these areas. I know that destinations are a much more complicated case than the others, and that is why they have not been implemented yet, but this is without a doubt a necessary function to help avoid such issues.

Kind regards,

[rakunavi]

Hello Daniel, thank you for your comment.

What is interesting about this matter is that it worked fine until build 319 released on Nov 28, 2016. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but some change made in build 320 released on February 6, 2017 has caused this strange behavior since then and up to the latest build 396.

• Animation.gif

I am aware of the difficulties in handling named destinations, but I wonder if your perception of "they have not been implemented yet" is not quite right, since it worked fine in the builds of long ago. I think the approach required to solve a problem that has always been abnormal from the beginning is different from a problem that was normal until a certain point in time and then went wrong.

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, rakunavi

I was not around that long ago, so I cannot speak to what occurred at that time, but there are many more considerations to be made when adding control options to such capacity. Yes, we could revert to the old handling and never copy any destinations, but that would undeniably cause more headache for users who now expect these item to keep working after such an action. In turn, to re-implement that option, we do need to take a more complex route.

Those who currently run into the issue of too many destinations have a handful of solutions available to resolve the issue, you mentioned the best one, the "remove invalid" command.
In the end, best practice is to avoid repeatedly extracting and inserting pages back into the same document whenever possible.

Kind regards,