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J
JStro
Participating Frequently
December 13, 2021
Question

How do I remove a blank link annotation?

  • December 13, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 12273 views

Under the Annotations under my Content panel, there is a link that does not highlight any content when selected. It has an associated link objr under the tags panel. I'd like to remove this from my document. It's possible to delete the link objr under the tags panel, but the associated link annotation remains. This leads to a flag under the accessibility checker. How can I delete this link annotation?

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    2 replies

    M
    Michelle243482146jck
    Participating Frequently
    April 27, 2023

    I thought I'd offer a workaround for the "deleting link annotations" issue. It's tedious, but it works. You may want to save versions throughout this process in case you need to go back to fix something; these tasks cannot be undone.

    PART 1: Force Acrobat to locate all untagged annotations (unusually these were created through Acrobat's Autotag process or Word's "best for electronic distribution and accessibility" PDF Save As process)

    1. In Acrobat, select the Content tab.
    2. Select the Options drop-down menu and choose "Find."
    3. The Find Element dialog box opens. Select "Unmarked Annotations" from the Find drop-down menu. Choose the "Search Document" radio button. Click "Find." 
    4. Acrobat highlights the unmarked annotation with the Find Element dialog box still open. From the dialog box, select "Tag Element." 
    5. The New Tag dialog box opens. Select "Link" from the Type drop-down menu, and select OK.
    6. Acrobat will automatically jump to the next unmarked annotation; repeat steps 4 and 5 until all annotations are tagged.
    7. Save.


    PART 2: Delete Links in the document

    1. Go to the Tags tab. Be sure "Highlight Content" is selected in the Options drop-down menu.
    2. All newly created, yet unwanted, <Link> tags should appear at the bottom of your Tags tab. 
    3. Select an unwanted <Link> tag. Acrobat will highlight its location in the document. 
    4. In the document, right-click on the highlighted link, and select "Delete Link."
    5. Repeat for all unwanted <Link> tags.
    6. Save.


    STEP 3: Delete Empty Tags from the entire document and save.

      J
      JStroAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      April 28, 2023

      Thank you for your solution. I'm not sure if my method is any less tedious. I extracted the page to reconstruct it without the blank annotations by transferring all the content to a blank page before inserting (not replacing) the reconstructed page back in to its appropriate position in the document. If there were internal links/references, this method requires correcting all the broken links throughout the document.

      I've found that transferring over the content is possible by creating a new PDF with a blank page and then inserting the extracted page with the content to be transferred to follow. Then, in the Content panel, cut all the content from the second page and paste it to the first.

      M
      Michelle243482146jck
      Participating Frequently
      May 12, 2023

      That's a clever solution as well! My issues tend to pop up in longer documents (over 20 pages), and the link issue might appear on every page. I'm remediating a ton of scanned archival documents that require OCR; the links issue has been popping up often when the original scan has a hyperlink in the should-be-artifact footer. *face palm*

      ls_rbls
      Community Expert
      ls_rblsCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 14, 2021

      can you share a screenshot of what you see ?

       

      Seems like you're referring to a weblink of a documen link, in which case you may need to employ the "Edit PDF" tool.

       

      When you open this tool, a toolbar will appear; select the "Link" item , then select from the context menu "Remove Weblinks..."

      J
      JStroAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      December 14, 2021

      In this first image, the link--which is unfortunately not a weblink but an internal-facing link that directs to another page--creates a highlight as intended and the associated link annotation. I've redacted the text, but the regular text is in black and the linked text in violet:

       

      In this second image, the second link annotation does not show a highlight. Without the highlighted box, I'm unable to choose to edit or delete the link and link annotation:

       

      In this third image, the third link annotation is associated with a highlight over the second linked text.

       

      Each of the link annotations are also associated with a link objr in the tags panel. What I'd like to do is delete the second link annotation that isn't associated with linked text in the document and that doesn't create a highlight.

      If it helps, the original document was created in Word, which was converted to PDF.

      J
      JStroAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      December 14, 2021

      Did you try using the Link tool under Edit PDF? That is the way to edit or remove links.


      Yes, but the Link tool under Edit PDF only seems to work when the link annotation is associated with content that gets highlighted. The link annotations I'm having issues with do not lead to content being highlighted when they are in focus. It's also not possible to remove all web links because these are not web links but internal.

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