Cross-references between PDF documents converted from Words documents

[Francesco Alessandro]

Hello everyone,

I have searched a lot on the web, but I have found no exhaustive answer to my problem.

I have two Words documents, let's call them DocumentA.docx and DocumentB.docx.

The Headings of the DocumentB.dotx have associated Bookmarks.

In this way I can insert hyperlinks in DocumentA.docx by selecting the desired bookmark in DocumentB.dotx (and the link is inserted in the form “DocumentB.docx#myBookmark”).

In this way, by clicking on the link in DocumentA.docx, DocumentB.docx is opened and the cursor positioned on the desired selected bookmark.

However, when I convert the two files to PDF, the hyperlinks within each document work, but obviously those between the two documents no longer work. I tried to manually modify the links in DocumentA.docx, because after PDF conversion obviously they still point to the DocumentB Word file, changing it in "DocumentB.pdf # myBookmark", but the trick doesn't work (the PDF opens, but positioned on the first page, not on the desired bookmark). So, it seems that there is no way to solve the problem on the Word side of the problem (it sounds a little bit like "the darkside of the Moon")...

Does anyone know a way to preserve the cross-link mechanism between Word files once they are converted to PDF? Is there possible to use the JavaScript in Acrobat to find all links to DocumentB and to change them in order to open the PDF Document at the right Bookmark?

I'm sorry if I'm asking something already solved in other threads, but I wasn't able to find an answer.

Thank you,

Francesco

[Francesco Alessandro]

As additional information, I discovered that the trick of finding all links in the Word document and replacing them changing the file extension in ".pdf" and using "#nameddest=myBookmark" instead of "#myBookmark" works properly if I set the browser (e.g. Edge) as default application for opening the pdf files instead of Acrobat Reader.

But this means that we have to impose to the final users to change their default preferences, and I'd like to avoid that...

Any suggestion?

Thank you,

Francesco