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Question

How to link to external pdfs

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 27, 2019
3 replies
2231 views

Hello,

This is probably a fairly simple thing to do, but so far, I'm having trouble doing it. I'd like to create a hyperlink in my Frame document to an external PDF. I'm using FM 2019. I've tried using Insert > Hypertext but I'm not sure which command to use and also, how to reference the PDF to which I want to link.

Thanks in advance.

Bob

Formatting and numbering

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LinSims

Community Expert

OK, I had thought I remembered that there were issues with support for linking, and I found the reference in the FrameMaker help. A bit of searching turned up this table. If I'm reading it correctly, what you want to do can't be done with bog standard Frame. I think it's possible to do using postscript commands, and Shlomo's Timesavers is the easiest way to get it done. You'll have to weigh the cost of buying his add-on versus learning how to create the postscript commands (which I think have to be put on reference pages? Again, not something I've paid a lot of attention to).

bobk21020394Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

I looked over the tables and the manual containing them and while there may indeed be some issues with this feature, I confess that I'm still not clear on the proper steps to accomplish it. I'm trying the openlink <path to file> and while I did not receive an error when I clicked Update, I'm not sure what to do next. There is no Insert Hypertext Marker button in FM 19 and for some reason, I'm now only seeing a "Conditional Tags" tab in the Hypertext dialog box (see image). I'm pretty sure that there was a Marker tab, for inserting a marker.

All that being said, I've been told by someone in marketing that for this project, we can probably insert the links after the fact Adobe Acrobat. I may need to fight with this some more in the future though.

LinSims

Community Expert

There is both an Insert > Marker and an Insert > Hypertext command available from the menu bar. Hypertext is a specific type of marker, and if you use that command it gives you options from a drop-down to prepopulate commands. Marker also lets you insert hypertext markers, but you have to type all the commands in by hand. The table I pasted above tells you how both the PDF and the HTML outputs react to those marker/hypertext commands; you'll note that the Frame to PDF conversion means that quite a few of the commands don't work or don't work properly in the PDF output. The notation that all the commands work in view-only Frame implies that a lot of them don't work in an editable Frame file, also, which is what I've been finding when trying to test this out.

I can understand why this used to be the case. When FrameMaker was an independent company, it also had a product called FrameViewer which allowed users to view (but not edit) Frame files and I suspect that most of these commands were developed with that model in mind. What I don't understand is why Adobe hasn't updated the code so that these commands work in PDF files (and in editable Frame files, since FrameViewer is no longer available so it's pointless to support something that only works in view-only Frame files and can't be checked otherwise). PDF is its bread-and-butter, after all.

LinSims

Community Expert

I've only used hyperlinks to open webpages or emails. If the file is on the internet, the marker command that works is message URL, which downloads the file if it is part of the URL.

I've been unable to get any of the other suggested codings to work. If the file is out on the Internet, the marker is not converted into a link in the PDF. If the file is on my local machine, I get an error.

I dunno. Someone with much more savvy than me is needed, I'm afraid.

Hezy A

Inspiring

Hi,

When you insert the link for a file on the local machine there is indeed an error.

Is that what you mean?

After that it works

LinSims

Community Expert

I don't get an error on insertion. I get an error when I try to use the link in the Frame document, and the link is not turned into a hyperlink in the PDF.

I have a vague recollection that there the conversion of FrameMaker docs to PDFs has issues with commands like these, but since I've never done more than used internal to the document xrefs or hyperlinks to websites (both of which work fine in Frame and the resulting PDFs), I've never spent the time to track down what's going on and how to fix it. bobk21020394 may need to check Shlomo Perets website (Microtype) and invest in the Timesavers addon.

LinSims

Community Expert

I think your coding is:

message URL <file location>/<filename>

where <file location> is where the document is stored as either an http address (such as "https://example.com") or a network address with drive/directory paths (such as "N:/directory/subdirectory/file location") and <filename> is the full name of the file, including the extension (such as "example.pdf").

The only caveat to this is that if anything changes, the link breaks.

bobk21020394Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks. I will try it tomorrow.

bobk21020394Author

Participating Frequently

linsims Thanks for your advice. Unfortunately, I'm still having issues with this. Even though I want to link to an external PDF, to simplify my testing, I'm trying to link to an Internet URL. I tried message URL but I'm not sure how to use the Marker functionality. The UI in FM 2019 is different from previous versions. Where previously, you would click "New Hypertext Marker", now you have a Marker tab with a Marker Type drop-down list and a field for Marker text. I'm sure if I understood the FM way to do it, I'd find the UI easier to work with. It seems like it might have been easier using the older method. Funny enough, even the Adobe help page for FM 2019 seems to reference the pre-2019 method. https://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/2019/using/using-framemaker-2019/WSd817046a44e105e21e63e3d11ab7f7960b-7e10_ver12.0.html

I have to say, setting up a hyperlink in FM seems overly complicated.

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