Why doesn't Preview in Mountain Lion support hyperlinks. I received a PDF with hyperlinks that work when opened in Adobe Reader, but when opened in Preview the links don't work. There also doesn't seem to be a way to add links to a PDF in Preview. Am I missing something?
On another note, does anyone know how to edit the text in a PDF that was created using Acrobat, but that is unlocked?
Thanks
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
Depending upon how the PDF was created links may or may not work in Preview. If the PDF was created by "printing" a document into a PDF file, then the links don't work. But if it's made using Adobe Acrobat then the links work fine.
Obviously from the above you can't put links into a PDF document except using the application that created the PDF or by using Adobe Acrobat.
You cannot edit a PDF document except in Adobe Acrobat.
Thanks Kappy. The PDF I have was created in Adobe InDesign and the hyperlinks don't work when opened with Preview - they do work when opened with Adobe Reader.
Yes, that appears to be a problem with Preview for some reason. I think you can fix that by running the document through Adbobe Acrobat to create the PDF.
Preview used to be able to add links to PDFs but it was one of the features silently taken away 😠
To edit a PDF either try Illustrator if you have it, or PDFPen Pro (I think they have a full featured demo). If you're ok with an online editor, I've used http://www.pdfescape.com/ quite a few times and it works a treat for a lot of things like adding links.
Thanks Kappy
Thanks LunaC
Hyperlinks survive in Preview, after printing to PDF from Safari or Pages ’09 v4.3, or exporting from the latter, on either 10.8.2 or 10.8.3.
I know this post is from 2013; however, I just came across it when I did a Google search so I figured I'd update it for anyone else searching.
In Preview,
PS - Don't worry, the grey diagonal lines do not appear on the PDF after you exit "Text" mode and click on the "Move" (hand) button.
You should understand what constitutes bad advice before you give it. If you had bothered to check your own steps, you'd see that there IS no "Add Link" in current versions of Preview.
this feature is missing in Mac Os X 10.9
Thank you, LunaC, for your reply from 2013. It lives on through the ages.
Yes, Adobe Acrobat is the obvious solution, but it's a very expensive industrial solution if your purpose is only for smaller PDFs and infrequent usage.
The free service of PDF Escape allows small PDFs to be uploaded, edited, saved, and immediately downloaded. All I needed it for was hyperlinking stuff.
Can't add hyperlinks to PDF in Preview?
