Hyperlinks Lost in Word Doc to Adobe PDF Conversion

Question

In Microsoft Word, I use the following path to export a document with mail merges into a PDF: Mailings tab > Finish & Merge > Print Documents > Current record > Set printer as Adobe PDF.

When I do this, the HTTPS hyperlinks in my document are flattened and do not work. I still see them as blue underlined text, but clicking/ctrl+clicking does nothing. However, the MAILTO: links work fine. Why is this?

Going to Mailings > Merge to Adobe PDF keeps the HTTPS hyperlinks, but it changes the name of the document to PDFMailer. For this workaround, is there any setting to keep the document the same name as it was originally?

JR Boulay · Accepted Answer

Printing to PDF is like printing to paper: the result is a flat document without any interactive feature.

You should use the Acrobat ribbon to export to PDF.

The mailto works anyway because by default Acrobat detects URLs and email addresses in the text, so no hyperlink object is required.

ls_rbls · Answer

hI @sarah_5270 ,

For your first observation, open the Acrobat Pro desktop app, go to Edit => Preferences => General => Basic Tools and ensure to tick the checkbox "Create links from URLs".

The next time that the merged PDF documents open up in Acrobat one or two clicks on the hyperlinks will complete the URL conversion seamlessly across the document.

As for your second observation, I personally don't know why it is designed like that, but sound to me like a good Feature request (in the absence of a clear answer). And personally it doesn't bother my workflow, as I conform with it as a way to ensure that the file name that will be used for the email is not the same name as the original Word document that was used to produce the file merging.

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