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

spidervye,

Give this a try I did this with Word 2011 using 10.7.5

Type your Word doc add the link http://www.apple.com then highlight the link and right (control) click on the link (keyboard shortcut C OMMMAND + K) it should turn blue, this is done on 10.7.5. I will now add a second link www. wikipedia.org you may have to enter the link in the "Link to" field then command p and save as a pdf.

The links should remain.

It won't let me add the PDF as a screen shot, but give this a try it seems to work fine on my machine

An option, not ideal for many... but it does work: use Libre Office (http://www.libreoffice.org/)... or Open Office.

The usual not-quite-perfect formatting conversion reality does apply... ie. some degree of tweaking may be required after opening your Word doc in LibreOffice. But, that aside, it gets the job done (hyperlinks ARE preserved when going to PDF).

Not only I beg to differ, I would like to protest against this post for wasting my time since the conversion between MS Word 2011 and Pages is imperfect to say the least and the first conversion lost a lot of information, e.g. drawings (embedded EPS); hence, there is no question to follow the second stage conversion into PDF. It **is** surely a problem that lies with the Apple for such bad converter from a de-facto standard that MS-Word represents.

Pages 5.5 (October 2014 release) does work to maintain links in the PDF.

To clarify, Pages 5.5 requires Yosemite (and this is a Lion discussion).

pranabdavinci wrote:

Not only I beg to differ, I would like to protest against this post for wasting my time...

pranabdavinci,

My suggestion about using Pages refers to version 4.x. Note that my post is dated May 10, 2013 before the release of OS 10.9 and iWork 2013 (Pages v.5.x) was released on October 22, 2013. If you read further in this entire thread, you will see that jimkessler noted this point and the conversion for hyperlinks do not work with Pages v5.x).

According to your profile, you are using OS 10.9 Mavericks and most likely Pages version 5.x. Pages version 4.x is NOT compatible with OS 10.9+. In addition, you are posting in the OS 10.7 Lion forum to which Pages version 5.x is not compatible. This is a user-to-user forum, who are trying to help each other from her or his experiences. There isn't anything that is "perfect" but you might have better luck protesting by providing your feedback to the manufacturers. See https://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html

Pages 5.5.1 worked with M$ Word 14.4.6 for me with hyperlinks to websites, pdf and DOI resources.

I opened the relatively simple .docx in Pages and exported to pdf. The .docx had nested lists and two tables as well as formatted text; it all seemed okay in Pages and the resulting pdf, opened in both preview and Adobe professional 11.0.09. All this was on Yosemite.

It's annoying though that such conversion is still hit and miss. Just because it worked this time I don't expect it to work next time.

This advice was VERY helpful! Zamzar works great but it truly ***** that this cannot be done directly from Word 2011. Any upcoming fix SOON????

Good to know that an option I posted almost two years ago still works. 🙂

but it truly ***** that this cannot be done directly from Word 2011. Any upcoming fix SOON????

Well, my guess is that in tech years, OS 10.7.x is considered old with Word 2011 being even older. Microsoft announced that Office for Mac 2016 is anticipated to release the second half of 2015. So, I do not think there will be a fix for retaining hyperlinks from Word 2011 to PDF. You could provide feedback to Microsoft from the Help menu of Word 2011.

Another possibility is if you can upgrade your Mac to Yosemite 10.10.x, then you could try the preview edition of Office 2016 Mac and provide feedback within those Office apps.

I am also having this problem...

The word document is messed up when you open it with pages.

Another option you can try to get hyperlinks to appear in a pdf:

1. create your document in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac. then insert a blank line right above the text where you want the hyperlink to appear.
2. copy and paste the full link onto this line. reduce the font size so that it just fits above your text
3. highlight the link and change the line spacing to 1.0
4. keep the link highlighted and change the font color to white - so that the link appears invisible in the pdf you will create
5. go to the file menu and choose 'save as...'
6. in the drop down box choose 'pdf' and save
7. open your pdf and hover your mouse over where the text and link should be. the mouse will change to the 'hand' indicating there is a hyperlink there. if you hover for a couple of seconds, a popup will display the link so that you can double check that the URL is correct. click on it and you are good to go.

with these steps you maintain all formatting. You also don't need to forgo using MS Word altogether, or switch to using other software just to get hyperlinks to appear.

hope this helps.

This website does the trick, great for converting a lot of things:

www.smallpdf.com

So many options, none of them perfect. This has been a big issue for me as I create Sales documents that must include hyperlinks to videos and URLs. The only useful, accurate way I have found around this is to run Parallels on my Mac and a Windows version of Office. (Or put the file on a USB and take it to a PC) Create your doc on the Mac, save the pdf from Windows. Perfect. Everything works. The other crazy thing here is that the Windows pdf is a 10th of the size of the Mac version. Making it emailable, where the Mac ones aren't. Anyone know why?

I have always been a Mac man, but this crazy situation with Word hyperlinks in pdfs has tried my loyalty! Surely it was such an easy fix if someone could be bothered?

Thanks - Option A, opening in Pages and exporting to PDF worked like a charm.

🙂