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After exporting a Pages (8.2.1) document to PDF, Apple's own man pages' hashtag symbol used in the URL (#) was translated to %23, the unicode for a hashtag.
So,
https://help.apple.com/deployment/macos/#/apd1fa5245b2
was incorrectly changed during the 'Export' process to:
https://help.apple.com/deployment/macOS/%23/apd1fa5245b2
And prevents someone from going to the correct page.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Hi VikingOSX,
Thank you for all your effort in trying to help. Unfortunately the links still changed to '%23'. I even tried making a JPEG graphic of the actual words and placing the link in white letters and 3% transparency over them in order to pretend that they were still links, but then when I opened the document in box.com where they're stored, the links wouldn't work at all.
So, to your point above (thank you), I simply added the fully-articulated hyperlink right into the text so that people could at least manually copy and paste the URL and go there for help.
I just find it ironic that , of all companies, uses a hashtag in their URL that prevents it from simply and properly being shared like every. other. URL. I've ever come across. I'm sure there's a good reason for it, like they've had it this way for 30+ years and they're not about to change it, which I can understand. It's not a big deal, and we got around it.
Thank you again for your time and effort with helping me.
Cheers.
Hi VikingOSX,
Thank you for all your effort in trying to help. Unfortunately the links still changed to '%23'. I even tried making a JPEG graphic of the actual words and placing the link in white letters and 3% transparency over them in order to pretend that they were still links, but then when I opened the document in box.com where they're stored, the links wouldn't work at all.
So, to your point above (thank you), I simply added the fully-articulated hyperlink right into the text so that people could at least manually copy and paste the URL and go there for help.
I just find it ironic that , of all companies, uses a hashtag in their URL that prevents it from simply and properly being shared like every. other. URL. I've ever come across. I'm sure there's a good reason for it, like they've had it this way for 30+ years and they're not about to change it, which I can understand. It's not a big deal, and we got around it.
Thank you again for your time and effort with helping me.
Cheers.
There was a time, a few years back, when Pages would not even permit you to enter a link in the link editor until it was properly URL encoded there.
All you can do in Pages is visit its Preferences : Auto-Correction panel, and disable both arrows. If the first is unset and the second is, you will have to temporarily enable the first arrow item to disable the second item, before disabling the first item again.
Also, in Pages Edit menu > Substitutions sub-menu, do not have smart links selected. You will need to quit Pages and relaunch for these Preference settings to be obeyed. This will export a link with the hashtag intact, to the PDF. Though unadorned with any indication that it is a functional link — it is active when clicked.
Apple will conform to the URL percent encoding standards when exporting to PDF. This is because the hashtag is a reserved symbol, and would be converted to %23. Both links as provided in your post work for me.
Thank you VikingOSX. Yes, my mistake. I copied and pasted the correct link, and only changed the visible text instead of also updating the actual '%23' html code.
The problem remains - exporting changes the # to %23. How do I prevent that?
I guess here's another way to phrase it: If Apple will always conform to the standard and export a # as %23, is there some way I can 'trick' Pages into not allowing this to happen (like a comment in coding), or put quotes around it, or refer to another web page that can correctly refer to the proper page...
Per the last paragraph of my previous post, the hashtag was exported from Pages v8.2.1 to PDF without URL encoding the hashtag. I do not use Box.com.
Export to PDF Changes # to %23
