How to retain hyperlinks converting word 2011 to .pdf and Adobe PDF

I am having the same problem. The gravity of the problem seems to depend on the version of Word 11 and/or whether using Mac OS Lion or previous versions.

In some environments, pure http or even www links appearing as such are preserved when converting from Word to PDF using Aperçu or Adobe; from my experience, other links, where the display text does not look like a link, are never preserved!

I have to go to Windows in order to get a proper handling of hyperlinks (using Adobe Acrobat): I do not understand why Apple and Adobe do not rapidly and permanently fix this problem, which does not seem like a difficult one, but is very annoying for Mac users!

I too am having this issue, and it is a big one for me, as I work as a technical writer and the manuals I create have to be converted to pdf files for the client. Is there REALLY no solution to this other than switch to using Office in Windows? I have seen so many posts about this issue it seems absolutely crazy that no-one has addressed it. I'm about to install Parallels just so I can run Office in Windows and maintain my hyperlink and TOC functionality, but this seems nuts.

Option A

If you have Apple Pages…

Open the Word 2011 document in Pages.

Go to the File menu, select Export, choose PDF… from the pop out menu and follow the prompt.

Option B

Go to the free file conversion web site Zamzar. Follow their four-step process to upload and convert your Word 2011 document to pdf.

Note: url addresses in the Word 2011 doc do become hyperlinks in the resultant PDF.

IMO, what we experience is a Microsoft problem NOT Apple nor Adobe. (Apple Pages retain hyperlinks.) You can help get the attention of Microsoft about this issue. In any of the Office 2011 applications, go to the Help menu and select “Send feedback about Word/Excel/PowerPoint.” That will take you to their Office for Mac Product Feedback web site page. Fill out the form and submit. Note that you can only choose one product to report on at a time. Repeat the feedback by selecting each of the other MS Office 2011 applications.

HTH

LilyLC is correct. Unfortunately, this is a long-standing issue:

http://msgroups.net/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/links-lost-on-conversion-to /63190

Jim

I beg to differ. Links in Pages (5.1) are in fact lost upon conversion to PDF. This problem lies squarely in Apple's domain.

aaprior2014: The comments about PDFs refers to Pages 4. Pages 5.x, which requires Mavericks (released in October, 2013), hadn't been released in May, 2013 when this discussion had its last comment prior to yours. But thanks for the information about Pages 5.1. Apple's been slowly adding capabilities to Pages 5 since it was released, but it appears that this helpful feature which was present in Pages 4 has yet to be added to Pages 5.1. Let's hope it's on their list to be included in the future.

I recently encountered this annoying problem. A solution that I have found is that with the latest (August 2014) update to Word for iPad if you email a document as a pdf then the generated PDF has all the links in place and it keeps the formatting in tact.

I seem to have posted too soon. It appears that links only work using the Word for iPad pdf export if the text is the same as the url. So if the text says www.link.com and the url is the same then the hyperlink shows up in the pdf. However, if you edit the display text to just show "link" then the hyperlink is lost when you email the pdf. Both links appear the same in Word for the iPad. Subtle but frustrating.

This has been a long standing issue with Acrobat Pro. When I generate my font article from Safari directly to the Adobe PDF choices, every single link is lost. If I choose OS X's PDF option, it works. However, then all of the graphic elements get reduced (high JPEG compression). Once saved out of Safari (or any other source) as an OS X generated PDF, then I can open the document in Acrobat Pro and add security, optimize the size, or whatever else and the links are maintained. But the links will not generate in the original PDF output through the Adobe choices.

I've also looked it up on Adobe's site where many users have looked for an answer on the same subject. So far, there is no solution. At least none that I've found.

I like the Apple Pages application feature for maintaining links exporting PDF. It really works quite well. OpenOffice and InDesign have the same abilities for maintaining links when exporting PDF files too. For Web pages there is Acrobat's Web Capture utility and an Automator Workflow that allows usage within Safari on Adobe Labs.

Create PDF Utility for Safari

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/acrobat_ittools.html

Hi Steve,

I hadn't seen that one before. Unfortunately, it's pretty useless. It's the same function you can call from Acrobat Pro's menus, which produces terrible results. As a "for instance", try it with my font article:

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

The fonts in the article aren't used and the background image is lost (despite the option being turned on to save it). I've gone through the settings a few times and can't see any way to save and store the web fonts used on the page.

Something I hadn't thought of before. I saved my article as a PostScript file and then dropped it into the Distiller. Using my settings to maintain embedded images as is (don't ruin them), the results were perfect, except all links were once again lost.

I think I've found a solution.

1) Go to www.freepdfconvert.com

2) Upload your Word doc

3) Don't include any email address

4) Choose PDF as output

5) You will get a link to download the file as a PDF

For me the links worked like a charm. The formatting (fonts) was off a bit, but this is the first solution I've found that works. Hat tip to Marketer's Corner for the solution (http://youtu.be/T9UBMPzrGtc).

The web site, freepdfconvert is completely offline. At least at the time I'm looking it is.

They came back online at some point, so I tried them again. You're allowed to enter a URL, so I did that and pointed it to my font article. I got this message:

So it's limited to files such as a Word document, and whatever else they support.