Are Hyperlinks supposed to work after PDF export?

Welcome to Apple Discussions Studio 246

In a word, no. PDFs created by Pages, using Apple's built-in PDF engine, are really just pictures of the original file. Unless you are using a PDF reader that can search for & identify URLs & e-mail addresses, the links won't be "clickable."

Peggy

Peggy, you said...

"Unless you are using a PDF reader that can search for & identify URLs & e-mail addresses, the links won't be "clickable.""

Could you explain that a bit more. Are you refering to Preview or Acrobat should be able to read the addresses?

I just PDFd a Word file and it lost the hyperlinks, they're underlined, but not active. My client needs these active. What could I do to keep these active in a PDF?

Welcome to Apple Discussions David

This is a rather old thread. Since the previous last post a whole new version of iWork with Pages 2 & Keynote 3 has been released.

Using the OS X Save As PDF... option in the Print dialog (as you probably did with the Word document) creates a picture of the page. Just like you can't click on a printed piece of paper with the blue, underlined links or a scanned picture of something with a web address without software to recognize them as links. The links are underlined because that is what Word does with them & you can click on them in a Word document opened on your computer.

I haven't tried it yet, but others have reported that the Export to PDF function in Pages 2 does retain active links...

I just did a quick test by putting a hyperlink in a Pages 2 document & both exported & printed it as PDFs. In both documents opened in Preview it looked like the links were active & clicking them took me to my web browser, Safari, but neither one opened the page the link was to.

Peggy

Welcome to Apple Discussions Studio 246

In a word, no. PDFs created by Pages, using Apple's
built-in PDF engine, are really just pictures of the
original file. Unless you are using a PDF reader that
can search for & identify URLs & e-mail addresses,
the links won't be "clickable."

Is this just a problem with all, or some versions of Acrobat Reader?

I'm able to create hyperlinks in Pages and have these links work even after exporting them to PDF. Mind you, I'm using Mac OS X 10.4.4, Pages 2, and opening the PDF in Preview.

Dale

I would note (since the original poster shows Panther) that Pages' links are only live if exported to PDF under Tiger (10.4.x).
Peggy's observed behavior sounds a little odd to me — Peggy, you might try quitting Safari, and trying again. Note that the text of the hyperlink and the linked URL don't need to be the same.

Furthermore, bookmarks and the Table of Contents generate intradocument links. The easiest way to try these out is simply Print Preview, since that is a one step operation to create a PDF and open it with Preview.

As you alluded to, Acrobat (at least some versions) will auto-recognize URL's and make them hot-clickable, regardless of whether there's an underlying hyperlink set up by Pages.

Titanium PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Yes, the OP is, or was, using Panther. I was responding to David who resurrected this thread & whose profile says he is using Tiger. I just did a quick test, not meant to be a definitive answer.

Peggy

On a Tiger 10.4.4 machine running Pages 2 the links are active when exporting to PDF then using either Acrobat Reader (7.0.5) or Preview. That is, everything works as it should.

Ok, let me get this straight. So I have Pages 1.0.2 running on OS X Tiger 10.4.4. When I save as PDF, my hyperlinks won't work in the PDF.

Not to sound cheap or anything, but is there another way to get these hyperlinks working in a PDF other than dropping another $79 to get iWork '06?

Ok, let me get this straight. So I have Pages 1.0.2
running on OS X Tiger 10.4.4. When I save as PDF, my
hyperlinks won't work in the PDF.

That's correct.

Not to sound cheap or anything, but is there another
way to get these hyperlinks working in a PDF other
than dropping another $79 to get iWork '06?

I don't know of any free programs to do this. You could buy Adobe Acrobat Elements or Adobe Acrobat Standard, both much more expensive than iWork.

The free open-source program, OpenOffice, version2.0, will create the links in a PDF file. You need to have X11 installed first (it's on the Tiger install disks). You can get OpenOffice here:

http://download.openoffice.org/2.0.2/contribute.html?continue=http%3A//www.openo ffice.org/project/porting/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

The links didn't work with earlier versions of OO, so make sure you download and install only version 2.0.2. Also, make certain you get the English version and not the French one (I did that by mistake once).

Claire