HELP: I need to link a PDF within PDF and be able to open and return to original PDF

Question

I have a master PDF and have attached 7 supplemental PDF documents. I created "click here" icons and used the steps below so that the linked document would open. The problem is, once I open the supplemental PDF, it closes the original master. I would like to close the linked document and return to the master view. Is there a way to do this?
Or is there a way to do this from InDesign? I created master file in InDesign and exported as an Interactive PDF.  I created the buttons and linked them to external files. This works great as long as the master PDF and the links are all in one file, but that is a pain to send to a viewer. Ideally, I want to be able to send the master PDF to a viewer and not have to send a links folder. Is there a way to embed the supplemental PDFs into the master so that they are all combined into one file AND have the ability to use buttons to call up one of the attachments, close, and return to the original?
Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

I want to do the same thing that the original poster of this question wants to do. I haven't worked extensively with Acrobat so am finding by trial and error the several ways PDFs within PDFs can be accomplished. I'm using a trial version of Acrobat Pro X and have experimented with three options.
1 - I've created a Portfolio and am impressed with what that can do, though I think it may be "overkill" for the current size of my project.
2 - I've also tried creating this project as an index but discovered that the links I'd created in the original docs didn't work when I moved the index and its contents (keeping the file structure the same). I presume this means the links are absolute? I also don't understand how it is that users search a .pdx file, or how to present what I want to be the original opening PDF of indexed docs.
3 - I've also thought to create one PDF with attached PDFs, so I'd like to have you expand on your comment about creating a master document and attaching documents to it.
The specifics of my project are these: I have created a master directory that contains approximately 120 links. Most of the links are repeated three times (users can find in the directory the item they need in three different ways: alphabetically, by application, or by module; hence each item listed once in each of three categories). I want to make that directory the "master" PDF that users open first, and then locate within that PDF the 5-8 PDF documents that contain all of the places to which the directory links. I want the "master" directory to be self-contained and completely "portable" as far as all of the documents and links are concerned so that when I make the PDF available from our website users can open the master from there or copy it and have all of the docs they need with all of the links intact. I think I prefer that all docs open in new windows, since returning to the original doesn't seem very user friendly in Acrobat (I like the tabs feature in FoxIt when multiple PDFs are open...).
I'd like an opinion about the best way to accomplish what I need to do, and am also wondering whether there are other options I am unaware of. BTW, the reason we've decided to document this whole project in PDFs rather than HTML is because this project contains a big number of tables, which do not look consistent across various browsers (i.e., most of our tables look fine in IE and Firefox, but awful in Google Chrome...). In researching my issue on the Acrobat Windows forum I see that rendering tables in Acrobat is also an issue that seems to be unresolved.
Thank you!