Open links within PDF into a new tab, when viewed on a different platform i.e. Chrome/Safari

Question

Hi,

In our company, we upload PDF's onto our Software for our customers to view that sometimes include internal/external links. Normally I add links in via Acrobat/InDesign, these open in a new tab fine within these programmes, but our customers view them on their browsers i.e. Chrome/Safari.

Is there a way I can code a link in adobe on a PDF, so it opens into a new tab for our customers viewing within their browser?

Thanks,

Ellie

ls_rbls · Answer

The family of modern web browsers doesn't allow this workflow anymore, plus what you're asking is more of a user preference and choice in whatever browser they use.

Moreover, this family of modern browsers (like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and the new Micrososft Edge browser) they all have their own PDF viewing capabilities (although limited) which will try to open any link to a PDF directly in the browser.

The only way to avoid this is to instruct the users to configure the browser(s) to download to a folder location instead of opening directly in the browser(s).

You said that you upload PDFs onto your software, which software is this like a cloud-based service?

So in my opinion, it would be a lot easier to simply use the "Share" feature of Acrobat or upload documents directly to the Document Cloud.

The reason I am suggesting this option is so that the users should access these PDFs directly in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC which is free to download and install.

NOTE: For this to work with best results Adobe Acrobat Reader must be set as the default PDF handler/viewer in the operating system (not the browser or any other PDF viewer(s)). This will bypass the browser issue and allow the PDFs to open natively in Acrobat Reader DC instead of the browser taking control over the PDF links.

The other idea that I can think of is to have the users install the Adobe Acrobat PDF Maker add-on extension in their browsers (usually Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox have additional feature in the extension that are not included when it is used with Chrome web browser and the new MS Edge browser).

Having this extension enabled basically gives the users a notice with a choice to open the PDF link directly in Acrobat instead of a new browsing tab. They don't need to have Adobe Acrobat Pro DC paid subscription to open this file with the add-on extension as long as you have set Adobe Reader as the defualt pdf handler.

I have tested this myself.

Maybe you may want to give it a shot to some of these suggestions and see how it goes.

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