Interactive Buttons not working when I export to PDF

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 4, 2022
3 replies
11884 views

I am in the process of producing an interactive diagram.

I have added all of my buttons and layers to the file and linked them up. When I preview it, everything works perfectly, however when I export to PDF only a handfull of the buttons work.

I've checked the links again and again and everthing is in order, so I don't know why the buttons aren't working when I PDF.

I have even deleted some of the buttons that don't show in the PDF and remade from scratch (relinking everything etc.) and they still don't show up.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Correct answer Derek Cross

Regarding PDF interactive buttons, you can have a word or words or an image (such as a button shape) as a document hyperlink to say another page in the document, or to an external website.
Some devices, for example, iPads, don't have rollover capability – only click – you should avoid multi-action buttons like On Click, On Roll Over, etc. Multi-state objects (MSO) don’t work at all in Interactive PDFs.

As an alternative to PDF, have a look at InDesign's Publish Online feature.

L

Luis Nossa

Participant

In my experience, when my Indesign file has non-english characters, the buttons linked pages (destination by table of content) will not work. When i remove the non-english characters, I export to PDF and everything works. In the end I can rename the PDF adding those non-english characters, and the buttons keep working.

C

Chan30607464n3np

Participant

How to remove the non-English characters?

L

Luis Nossa

Participant

I can't seem to replicate the problem again in the late Indesign version, but some time ago I noticed that the interactive buttons in the exported interactive PDF don't work if the document name has non-English characters (something like: "reação.indd" with "ç" and "ã"). I am referring to the name of the document, not any content in the document.
At the time, I created the interactive PDF from a file without non-English characters on it's name and in the end I put the non-English names back into the final PDF name. This way I lept the interactivity on the buttons.
Something strange that doesn't seem to make much sense (it's not even reported on the forums), but that's how it happened to me.

Derek Cross

Correct answer

Community Expert

Regarding PDF interactive buttons, you can have a word or words or an image (such as a button shape) as a document hyperlink to say another page in the document, or to an external website.
Some devices, for example, iPads, don't have rollover capability – only click – you should avoid multi-action buttons like On Click, On Roll Over, etc. Multi-state objects (MSO) don’t work at all in Interactive PDFs.

As an alternative to PDF, have a look at InDesign's Publish Online feature.

D

default2r56dxkbbcbbAuthor

Participant

Thanks Derek. Publish Online worked perfectly

Frans v.d. Geest

Community Expert

You say: 'when I preview it', however: there is no iPDF preview in InDesign. I guess you preview it in the EPUB-preview window, a completely different format, there it will work but that is not PDF.

Then: how do you export? You have to choose 'interactive PDF' from the format menu when saving, not just PDF.

Third: how are these 'buttons' set up? As real buttons or hyperlinks?

Fourth: in which app do you view the exported PDF? Any other app than Acrobat and changes are it will not work. Not on any mobile device anyway, but for example 'Preview' app on Mac will not work.

As said here many, many times: just forget iPDF, it is dead...