Package hyperref Warning: Token not allowed in a PDF string (Unicode): removing `\\' on input line 86

Question

Hey I am getting the following error

Package hyperref Warning: Token not allowed in a PDF string (Unicode): removing `\' on input line 86.

I've tried the following

\subsection{University of North Carolina \\ at Chapel Hill}

\subsection{{University of North Carolina} {\\} {at Chapel Hill}}

Answer 1

• this is a warning and not an error message

• manually putting formatting instructions in macros like \subsection is bad style. If you want your subsections to appear in a certain way, you should redefine their appearance instead.

• using \\ for line breaks is also bad. You shouldn't use it outside of tabular and similar environments.

• if you really must use it, provide an alternative string which hyperref can use to create the pdf bookmarks

---

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{hyperref}


\begin{document}


\subsection{\texorpdfstring{University of North Carolina \\ at Chapel Hill}{University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill}}


\end{document}