Exporting Excel to PDF breaks internal links

Hello people.

I work as an end-user IT support at Škoda Auto and I am currently dealing with the same problem as everyone else.

Our user who used on the old MS Office 2010 Standart with Adobe Acrobat 2010 and was always successful when converting from MS Excel to PDF. After getting a new machine with Office 2016 and Adobe Acrobat 2017, however, the ability to export functional links in pdf files was lost.

That's why I started testing and contacted Microsoft Support.

Personally, I tested MS Office 2010, 2013, 2016, and I can say that link conversion from 2013 above does not work. I've tried all the recommended settings for a successful conversion. I can say that I have tested all of these versions separately and then with the available versions of Adobe Acrobat (2010, 2011, 2015, 2017). Unfortunatelly, except for the first election.

The MS Office 2010 version is the only one that works reliably with any Adobe Acrobat version.

However, support for MS Office 2010 is coming to an end soon. That is why we are looking for a solution.

This whole matter has several specifics. Microsoft has admitted that even if it allows you to save files to PDF, it is just an "additional feature" and knows the problem. Additionally, he admitted that even MS Office 365 does not. He further noted that modifying and interfering with the problem-solving program would probably bring more problems than good.

The conclusion of this communication and the recommendation of Microsoft Support is that MS Office has never been functional for this transfer. And he referred me to Adobe, whose Acrobat sw is used in our country. I totally disappointed. I expected that if this feature is available, it will work 100%.

If anyone knew about a solution to this problem, I would be very happy to share it.

The way I use some other third party swap does not come smart, but I will take my gratitude for any tip.

Radek

Open the Excel file in OpenOffice and export it as PDF.

Hello JkarisZIS,

We apologize for the inconvenience caused, as per the description above, the internal links in the PDF are not working after exported from Excel, is that correct?

Please navigate to ACROBAT ribbon in Excel and choose Preferences, under the Settings tab, make sure "Add Links" is checked.

Also, in the Acrobat's Preferences from Edit>Preferences>Convert to PDF>Highlight Microsoft Office Excel>Edit Settings>In Adobe PDF settings for supporting documents window, check the box for "Add links to Adobe PDF file" and click OK.

After making these changes/settings, Close Acrobat and try exporting the Excel file to PDF or try creating the PDF from Acrobat itself from File menu>Create>PDF from a file and see if the internal links are working or not.

You can also refer and try the suggestions from the following Adobe discussions Excel hyperlinks not working when converted to PDF

Excel hyperlinks not working after convert to PDF

If the issue persists, please share the following details:

• Dot version of Acrobat installed, to identify go to Help>About Adobe Acrobat, or refer to Identify the product and its version for Acrobat and Reader DC
• Is it possible to share a sample file with us so that we can try it at our end? To share the file, please use Adobe Send feature, upload the file, share the link to files via private message only, How Do I Send Private Message

Let us know how it goes and share your findings.

Regards,

Anand Sri.