Inspiring

Answered

MS-Word image hyperlinks are lost creating PDF

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
July 4, 2025
4 replies
1310 views

Never had this issue before, but when creating a PDF from inside MS-Word (Save as Adobe PDF) all image hyperlinks are lost. Text hyperlinks remain intact. A workaround is to overlay an invisible textbox over each image, but we have hundreds of images in our document so it's impracticle. Anyone know of anything that might have recently changed. We follow the same Save as Adobe PDF process for every MS-Word doc we have and it's never been an issue.

Correct answer Stabes

Just off a support call with Microsoft and it seems a recent "Improvement" update on MS Office apps has (amongst other things) broken the hyperlink functionality on images when creating PDFs from Office applications. Non-Adobe PDF creation tools are also affected. They suggested I roll back my Office installation to an earlier version and the issue was resolved with that. They also suggested turning off auto updates for Office apps until the issue has been sorted out.

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sultan_3120

Participant

When Word image hyperlinks vanish in PDF, it’s usually due to the export method. Don’t use Print to PDF use File > Save As > PDF instead. Make images inline with text, add the hyperlink directly, and enable document structure tags in Options. For best results, use the Adobe Acrobat add-in, which preserves image links reliably.

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StabesAuthor

Inspiring

Yeah, tried all that, none of which worked.

L

Lawrence21777097nxyh

Participant

Following advice given, I'm still having to stick with Office/Word version 2505 to avoid this Microsoft problem.
Office is now at 2507, and it doesn't seem like this major problem has yet been address.
I don't suppose anybody has found any other workaround ?

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StabesAuthor

Inspiring

I haven't tried reinstating the auto-updates on MS-Word for fear that I'll be back where I started (nightmare!). Will be interesting to hear from anyone who is running 2507 if the issue persists.

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Lawrence21777097nxyh

Participant

Me too. 700 links failing across 5 major documents. Aaaarrgghh!
Spent 3 hours checking everything, then found your post - thanks.
Hope to hell MS get their finger out quickly on this.

Meenakshi Negi

Community Manager

Hi Stabes,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry about the trouble caused.

Please let us know if the issue occurs with all the files. Did you create a PDF using the Acrobat ribbon?

Try clicking on the Acrobat ribbon and checking the preferences set. Then, try creating a PDF using the same option.

Have you made any recent changes to the application? Share the Acrobat, MS Word, and OS version numbers on the machine.

Share the sample file with us to replicate this behavior for further investigation.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

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StabesAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Just off a support call with Microsoft and it seems a recent "Improvement" update on MS Office apps has (amongst other things) broken the hyperlink functionality on images when creating PDFs from Office applications. Non-Adobe PDF creation tools are also affected. They suggested I roll back my Office installation to an earlier version and the issue was resolved with that. They also suggested turning off auto updates for Office apps until the issue has been sorted out.

L

Lawrence21777097nxyh

Participant

This isn't a fix, just a temporary workaround. And if Microsoft don't fix the problem soon, there's a risk that Word etc might miss important security updates because it has to be frozen at version 2505.

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