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Carmelo381332297ijp
Participant
June 19, 2024
Question

Highlighted interactive links incompatibility

  • June 19, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 427 views

I have a pdf with an interactive toc.

I need to highlight some titles within the toc so that I know the paragraphs that are useful to me.

However upon opening the resulting pdf on iPhone's Files app, I have two issues:

the first one is merely aesthetical, being that the highlights lose their opacity (which I set at 40%), not a huge deal;

the second issue is very problematic, being that Apples seems to give precedence to the highlights over the interactive links, and this means that the toc becomes useless on my device (when I click on a highlighted title in the toc, the iPhone shows me the highlight/comment options instead of launching the linked page).

I tried flattening but this only solves the aesthetical issue, as it completely removes all interactive links.

Is there any workaround? I am sure there must be an option that moves the highlightings to the background or even better stops treating them as comments, while preserving the links from the toc to the pages.

Thank you in advance to whomever will help!

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
June 19, 2024

In what application are you opening it on the iPhone?

 

> I am sure there must be an option that moves the highlightings to the background 

-Not really.

> or even better stops treating them as comments, while preserving the links from the toc to the pages.

-That is possible, but tricky. To do that you would need to flatten the pages, which will convert all comments to static contents, but it will also do that for fields and links... To avoid that from happening you must make the links invisible, and then run this script:

 

this.flattenPages({nNonPrint: 1});

 

Then, once the comments are flattened, you can change the links back to being visible, if you wish.

Just make sure to save the flattened file under a new name, as this command is NOT reversible.

C
Carmelo381332297ijpAuthor
Participant
June 19, 2024

Thank you for your reply!

 

On iPhone I view my pdfs via the in-built viewer of the Files app.

 

Can you please explain the process to make links invisible and back to visible please? And where am I supposed to run that script? I believe that using the Process Print tool to flatten would be the same though(?)

 

Thank you for your help and time!

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
June 19, 2024

You need to do it when creating the file, using Adobe Acrobat, on a regular PC.

This code will first hide the links, then flatten the file, then "un-hide" them:

 

for (var p=0; p<this.numPages; p++) {
	var box = this.getPageBox("Crop", p);
	var links = this.getLinks(p, box);
	if (links==null || links.length==0) continue;
	for (var i in links) {
		links[i].borderWidth = 0;
	}
}

this.flattenPages({nNonPrint: 1});

for (var p=0; p<this.numPages; p++) {
	var box = this.getPageBox("Crop", p);
	var links = this.getLinks(p, box);
	if (links==null || links.length==0) continue;
	for (var i in links) {
		links[i].borderWidth = 1;
	}
}
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