diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 9f33d4cf..5f464987 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+2019-04-20  Jay Berkenbilt  <ejb@ql.org>
+
+	* Revert change that included preservation of outlines (bookmarks)
+	in --split-pages. The way it was implemented caused a very
+	significant performance penalty when splitting pages with
+	outlines. We need a better solution that only copies the relevant
+	items, not the whole tree.
+
 2019-03-11  Jay Berkenbilt  <ejb@ql.org>
 
 	* JSON serialization: add missing leading 0 to decimal values
diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index a86e472f..a6ff5baf 100644
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -77,6 +77,17 @@ Page splitting/merging
    * make sure conflicting named destinations work possibly test by
      including the same file by two paths in a merge
 
+   Note: original implementation of bookmark preservation for split
+   pages caused a very high performance hit. The problem was
+   introduced in 313ba081265f69ac9a0324f9fe87087c72918191 and reverted
+   in the commit that adds this paragraph. The revert includes marking
+   a few tests cases as $td->EXPECT_FAILURE. When properly coded, the
+   test cases will need to be adjusted to only include the parts of
+   the outlines that are actually copied. The tests in question are
+   "split page with outlines". When implementing properly, ensure that
+   the performance is not adversely affected by timing split-pages on
+   a large file with complex outlines such as the PDF specification.
+
    When pruning outlines, keep all outlines in the hierarchy that are
    above an outline for a page we care about. If one of the ancestor
    outlines points to a non-existent page, clear its dest. If an
diff --git a/qpdf/qpdf.cc b/qpdf/qpdf.cc
index 4ec0a48c..dec88241 100644
--- a/qpdf/qpdf.cc
+++ b/qpdf/qpdf.cc
@@ -4966,30 +4966,6 @@ static void write_outfile(QPDF& pdf, Options& o)
                     "/Nums", QPDFObjectHandle::newArray(labels));
                 outpdf.getRoot().replaceKey("/PageLabels", page_labels);
             }
-            // Copying the outlines tree, names table, and any
-            // outdated Dests key from the original file will make
-            // some things work in the split files. It is not a
-            // complete solution, but at least outlines whose
-            // destinations are on pages that have been preserved will
-            // work normally. There are other top-level structures
-            // that should be copied as well. This will be improved in
-            // the future.
-            std::list<std::string> to_copy;
-            to_copy.push_back("/Names");
-            to_copy.push_back("/Dests");
-            to_copy.push_back("/Outlines");
-            for (std::list<std::string>::iterator iter = to_copy.begin();
-                 iter != to_copy.end(); ++iter)
-            {
-                QPDFObjectHandle orig = pdf.getRoot().getKey(*iter);
-                if (! orig.isIndirect())
-                {
-                    orig = pdf.makeIndirectObject(orig);
-                }
-                outpdf.getRoot().replaceKey(
-                    *iter,
-                    outpdf.copyForeignObject(orig));
-            }
             std::string page_range = QUtil::int_to_string(first, pageno_len);
             if (o.split_pages > 1)
             {
diff --git a/qpdf/qtest/qpdf.test b/qpdf/qtest/qpdf.test
index a968404c..43219109 100644
--- a/qpdf/qtest/qpdf.test
+++ b/qpdf/qtest/qpdf.test
@@ -1594,6 +1594,8 @@ foreach my $i (qw(01-06 07-11))
                  {$td->FILE => "labels-split-$i.pdf"});
 }
 
+# See comments in TODO about these expected failures. Search for
+# "split page with outlines".
 $td->runtest("split page with outlines",
              {$td->COMMAND => "qpdf --qdf --static-id --split-pages=10".
                   " outlines-with-actions.pdf split-out-outlines.pdf"},
@@ -1602,7 +1604,8 @@ foreach my $i (qw(01-10 11-20 21-30))
 {
     $td->runtest("check output ($i)",
                  {$td->FILE => "split-out-outlines-$i.pdf"},
-                 {$td->FILE => "outlines-split-$i.pdf"});
+                 {$td->FILE => "outlines-split-$i.pdf"},
+                 $td->EXPECT_FAILURE)
 }
 
 foreach my $d (@sp_cases)