Link Objs tagged in wrong Link tag (PDF rom Indesign)

Report · Aug 30, 2023

Any idea why Indesign is placing LinkObjs in the wrong Link tag in a PDF ? I have about 20 pages of tables with links on every line, many are 2-line links. The first few pages are fine, but then the link objects (LinkObjs) are start to be tagged in the wrong Link tag, like one down in the tree from where it should be. A Link Obj will be in wrong Link tag and then the tag that should be in *that* Link tag will be in the next Link tag and so on and so on. It's like Indesign lost count somehow. In addition, some List Items are not tagging properly. Don't have access the Indesign file to see what this could be due to. Has anyone seen this and have any clues? Never seen this before.

Report · Aug 31, 2023

@raeben1,

Holy canoli.

Bad lists. Bad links. And bad Tables. No wonder you're having a bad day <grin>

These 3 items are where InDesign still fails to correctly tag the PDF with its export/interactive utility.

All of the recent ver 17 and ver 18 releases tend to do ok with these items in most cases, but have severe problems when:

The list, table, or hyperlink splits across lines, columns and pages.
The list contains hyperlinks.
The table has merged cells.

Your samples are the trifecta — you have them all!

First, the most stable and reliable version of InDesign at this time (August 2023) is 18.4 and we recommend InDesigners use their Creative Cloud manager app to roll back to 18.4 and not upgrade to 18.5. FYI, I'm not hopeful about the forthcoming 19.x update in the fall: I don't see these problems being fully fixed by then.

There's no hard and fast correction for these problems, whether you're in InDesign or Acrobat. But here are some suggestions for preventing the problems:

Avoid having these elements split across columns and pages. If they do, know that the PDF will need some PDF remediation.
Avoid multi-line hyperlinks. But this is really a pipedream for those of us in production. Although the <Link>/<Link-OBJR> tags are created twice, it's not a major accessibility error if they stay in the file; the user can still use the hyperlink and text, understand its context, and access the content. If you want to correct them, then in Acrobat, delete those double-line hyperlinks and rebuild them correctly in Acrobat.
Make all hyperlinks in InDesign with the Hyperlinks panel, but UNcheck the option to use shared destinations. This option tends to really mess up the tags.
When creating lists in Word or InDesign, use a dedicated paragraph style to format them rather than clicking the little list icons in the top control panel. Real paragraph styles are interpreted more accurately. In Word, have your clients expand their Styles panel to show all styles and then they can use any of the List Bullet and List Number styles (and modify their specs).

Another suggestion, but for your InDesign clients: we use and encourage our clients that create irregular tables (that is, with merged cells) to purchase the Made To Tag plug-in by Aaxio software. And then use it to export the PDF from the layout. Does such a better job than Adobe's export unility and avoids many of these problems. Very nice, clean tag tree. But it is pricey, and it's made by a company in Germany and for our government and corporate clients, that prevents them from having the plug-in. I've known the founder of Aaxio for decades and his company is top-notch and the software is reputable, and their products for print/prepress are used worldwide by the print industry.

Otherwise, beef up your tools for remediating lousy PDFs: CommonLook and Axes4 are what our shop uses.

Sure wish I had better news. At least know that my best wishes are with you.

—Bevi

View solution in original post

Report · Aug 30, 2023

Hi @raeben1,

It's hard to tell from your description what's happening. Can you tell us more details:

The operating system and version of InDesign you are using.
Screen capture of the hyperlink panel's details in InDesign, and a mathing screen capture of the <Link>/<Link-OBJR> tags in the PDF tag tree.
Screen capture of the incorrectly tagged <L> list elements.

Report · Aug 30, 2023

Thanks for your quick reply. This was been created in Indesign Mac -- I would assume the latest version as it is a recently created file, but I did not create it and do not have access to the ID file and don't know for sure. The PDF File properties says Producer: Adobe Indesign 18.5 (Macintosh). Adobe PDF Library 17.0 PDF Version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x) We receive files from this designer all the time and I've never seen this issue before. Attached is an example of how Links are tagging. with the text in one row and the Link Obj in the row above highlighted so you can see they are in the same Link tag. Also attached is an example of bad tagging where it tagged the cells from the next row including a list, in the current row.

Thanks for looking.

Report · Aug 31, 2023

@raeben1,

Holy canoli.

Bad lists. Bad links. And bad Tables. No wonder you're having a bad day <grin>

These 3 items are where InDesign still fails to correctly tag the PDF with its export/interactive utility.

All of the recent ver 17 and ver 18 releases tend to do ok with these items in most cases, but have severe problems when:

The list, table, or hyperlink splits across lines, columns and pages.
The list contains hyperlinks.
The table has merged cells.

Your samples are the trifecta — you have them all!

First, the most stable and reliable version of InDesign at this time (August 2023) is 18.4 and we recommend InDesigners use their Creative Cloud manager app to roll back to 18.4 and not upgrade to 18.5. FYI, I'm not hopeful about the forthcoming 19.x update in the fall: I don't see these problems being fully fixed by then.

There's no hard and fast correction for these problems, whether you're in InDesign or Acrobat. But here are some suggestions for preventing the problems:

Avoid having these elements split across columns and pages. If they do, know that the PDF will need some PDF remediation.
Avoid multi-line hyperlinks. But this is really a pipedream for those of us in production. Although the <Link>/<Link-OBJR> tags are created twice, it's not a major accessibility error if they stay in the file; the user can still use the hyperlink and text, understand its context, and access the content. If you want to correct them, then in Acrobat, delete those double-line hyperlinks and rebuild them correctly in Acrobat.
Make all hyperlinks in InDesign with the Hyperlinks panel, but UNcheck the option to use shared destinations. This option tends to really mess up the tags.
When creating lists in Word or InDesign, use a dedicated paragraph style to format them rather than clicking the little list icons in the top control panel. Real paragraph styles are interpreted more accurately. In Word, have your clients expand their Styles panel to show all styles and then they can use any of the List Bullet and List Number styles (and modify their specs).

Another suggestion, but for your InDesign clients: we use and encourage our clients that create irregular tables (that is, with merged cells) to purchase the Made To Tag plug-in by Aaxio software. And then use it to export the PDF from the layout. Does such a better job than Adobe's export unility and avoids many of these problems. Very nice, clean tag tree. But it is pricey, and it's made by a company in Germany and for our government and corporate clients, that prevents them from having the plug-in. I've known the founder of Aaxio for decades and his company is top-notch and the software is reputable, and their products for print/prepress are used worldwide by the print industry.

Otherwise, beef up your tools for remediating lousy PDFs: CommonLook and Axes4 are what our shop uses.

Sure wish I had better news. At least know that my best wishes are with you.

—Bevi

Report · Aug 31, 2023

Thanks for your insight Bevi! Will pass this on to the designer and hopefully we can avoid this problem in the future.

Report · Aug 31, 2023

For what it's worth I was able to find an earlier (Print) version of the Indesign file so I worked with it in Indesign (18.3 x64 Windows) a bit to try and recreate this problem. Exporting to PDF the links tag incorrectly for me as described above, using either Interactive or Print PDF. I also tried exporting to HTML and that worked flawlessly.