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gabry-el
Inspiring
November 8, 2018
Question

Not all hyperlinks are working after InDesign export

  • November 8, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 995 views

Hello,

I'm facing a big issue in acrobat after I export interactive PDF from Adobe InDesign.

I have a script in InDesign that creates textframes and links the PageItem to an anchor in another page (e.g. a title, a particular word, etc). As far as I check the links within InDesign, everything is fine: the entries in Hyperlink panel are all set correctly.

The problem is that when I open the exported PDF in Acrobat (I tried: latest versions of Acrobat Reader DC, Adobe Acrobat DC, Chrome PDF Viewer, Edge PDF Viewer), only some of the links are actually working (i.e. if I click on a box - the index finger cursor highlights the opportunity to do so - the view won't jump where I want: it does nothing at all. But if I click on another box, there's a chance that the link will behave as it is supposed to do).

Weird enough, I tried to edit the link within Acrobat DC - just right-clicking "Edit" and then saving from the pop-up as it appears. This will finally cause the link to work. This might be the (unnecessary) solution; the downside is that I have more than 1200 links to check, and for obvious reasons I can't do it manually.

Are there some workarounds to actually caus every single link in my file to work? Am I missing some weird and tremendously hidden checkbox in InDesign that is throwing me this output?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

M
Community Expert
Manan JoshiCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 13, 2018

Hi Gabryl,

You can share a small sample INDD document with this problem and post the issue with link to the InDesign document on the InDesign user forum as well to get more visibility to your issue.

I am suggesting this because if this is something that can be reproduced just using the InDesign interface then either this is a bug in InDesign or some setting that you may not be aware of. In both these cases the InDesign user forum would be better suited to give you quick results, as the folks hanging out on that forum are more. In case this issue occurs only when your script runs then please isolate the code to some condensed relevant size so that we can have a look over the code and provide suggestions.

-Manan

-Manan
G
gabry-elAuthor
Inspiring
November 15, 2018

Thank you for your reply. I'll see if I can share a part of the catalogue I'm working on, since it may in part contain confidentiality clause.

I really don't think that this issue is script-related, since also by exporting manually via InDesign menus does not solve the problem.

As I wrote, I can see that the links in the dedicated InDesign panel are correctly set-up; if I click either the destination or the source of the link, the setup is proved to be correct:

Also if I try to edit manually the link via Adobe Acrobat DC, the link proves to be right.

Yet the link isn't working as-is.

I should right click every link, open the edit menu (obtaining the "Link properties" window showed above) and then, doing nothing, click "OK" and save the file.

In this very way, the edited link finally works in all PDF readers quoted in first post; but, as I said, having to do so 1200 times is absolutely time consuming and it's not worth the candle.

So, again, my question is: is this an issue/a common issue/an issue that has been discovered yet? And, if the previous question is in some ways affirmative, are there any known workarounds to solve the problem very quickly or with little effort or time waste?

Vadsager
Vadsager
Participant
March 10, 2020

Hi gabry-el
Was this problem ever solved?
I have the exact same problem with my indexpage. 😞

Srishti Bali
Community Manager
Srishti BaliCommunity Manager
Community Manager
November 13, 2018

Moved to InDesign Scripting​

Jongware
Community Expert
JongwareCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 13, 2018

srishtib8795206  wrote

Moved to InDesign Scripting

But it does not seem scripting related. As OP says (and was correct to verify), the links appear correct in the document.

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