Is there a way to ensure that text anchors work properly?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 19, 2024
2 replies
1428 views

In my PDF documents, links to text anchors always function. However they don't always send a reader to the correct page.

Are there rules, such as things to do or avoid, when creating text anchors to ensure they work as intended?

I have found that sometimes when they do not work I can fix them by editing the anchored text. Just moments ago I was able to get a 10-word text anchor to work properly by putting "&" in place of "and".

I have been thinking that maybe having similar text on two pages might confuse InDesign's brain :-), because sometimes some of the words used in a text anchor will have words used in another anchor, but usually the text used will be totally unique.

Appreciate any insights.

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Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@adieu

When you create a "link" - Hyperlinks, Cross-References, etc. - you are pointing to a specific place / object / text - not some "first/random occurrence".

Can you share your document - can be on priv - please click my nickname.

Or if you work on a PC - you can use free Browser part of my ID-Tasker tool to check your "links".

BobLevine

Community Expert

First you say they always function and then you say they go to the wrong page. Can I assume you're referring hyperlinks? Have you made sure that shared hyperlink destination is disabled for all hyperlinks?

Please back up and provide info on version of InDesign, how you're exporting, how you're checking the PDF. Screenshots might be helpful as well.

A

adieuAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Bob and Robert,

Was up all last night trying to figure it out and think maybe I made a hash of things.

Thank you for replying. I use the latest version of InDesign on a Mac. I check by exporting to interactive pdf and testing the links.

To clarify, I was referring to links within the document though perhaps calling them text anchors confused the issue. It's what I call them and assumed InDesign did as well.

What I have always done is select a bit of text on a page, typically the title, since all the pages in my documents, whether they are 100 pages or 600 pages, have unique titles. I make the text a "new hyperlink destination". Then elsewhere I link to the new destination by highlighting a button or text, selecting "new hyperlink" and "Link to: Text Anchor".

Typically, the links work, but usually a few do not and I have to "tinker" with things — i.e. move or change text or link to page numberts. Anyway, I get things to work, as in the "working" pdf I will attach.

Next year (actually 2026), we have a project planned, merging the seven annual guides into one 850-page EPUB document. To prepare I thought I would try something different in the 2025 guides: put a bit of text in a faint typeface in the upper left corner of each page of each guide and link to it as a text anchor. The idea was that the text anchors in each guide would be unique and would not conflict when the guides were merged.

Anyway, I did this for the first guide, Gulf Islands, but some links did not go to the intended destination. Last night I edited the anchors in the first few pages and on each section head page to take out spaces with dashes and add numbers to the link destinations just to make them that much different.

It didn't work so good (pdf "not working" is also attached). The link on the cover page to "About us" goes to the wrong page (rather than the last page). On the main menu (page 3) the "About us" also goes to the wrong page. And the links to sections A to F go to the "About us" pages rather that the section fronts.

Also on the pages in Sections A-C, the tiny map links back to the respective section fronts instead go to the "About us" page. Note I have deleted these tiny map links in Sections D-L.

Maybe it's the location , maybe using numbers, I don't know. But if there was some list of do's and don't's that I could follow to make links to text anchors work better I would love to hear about them and know what I am doing wrong.

If you need to look at the indd file, I will send it privately if you wish.

ssp-2024-working.pdf

ssp-2025-not-working.pdf