Inspiring

Question

References with URLS making tagged annotations failed

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
November 18, 2025
1 reply
125 views

I am preparing a document with references at the back which contain URL hyperlinks and when I export the PDF and run the acessibilty report they are all failing the tagged annotations. Because they layout has the web addresses falling onto lines I believe the urls is getting truncated, I supsect this may be the culpret but I don't know how to join the links back together. Any idea on how I can fix this? Thanks in advance!

Amal.

Community Manager

Hi there,

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the trouble.

When URLs break across lines, Acrobat often interprets each line fragment as a separate, incomplete annotation. That’s why the accessibility checker flags them as “Untagged annotations” or “Failed link structure.”

Here are a few steps you can try to fix this:

1. Recreate the hyperlink in the source file (recommended)

If you’re exporting from Word, InDesign, or another authoring tool:
Make sure the full URL is inside a single hyperlink, even if it visually wraps to the next line.
In Word:
Highlight the entire URL > Insert > Link > add the full URI in the dialog box.
Word will keep the hyperlink intact even if it breaks visually when wrapping. This usually removes the annotation errors on export.

2. Avoid long raw URLs when possible, for accessibility and cleaner tagging, replace URLs with descriptive link text.

3. Fix links manually in Acrobat.

Tools > Edit PDF > Link > Add/Edit Web or Document Link
Draw a box around the full multi-line URL.
Add the target URL again.
For more information, please check the help page https://adobe.ly/3XzNfzo

Note: This can be tedious for long reference lists, which is why fixing it at the source is best.

Let us know how it goes.

~Amal

E

EricaSholycowAuthor

Inspiring

Hello thank you for your response.

I can verify that the hyperlinks are correct in the Indesign document. I can verify that the PDF hyperlinks function. The issue is there are broken and missing Link OBJR. The problem is in a list of references that have many hyperlinks. Some entries do not have any Link OBJR at all and some have OBJR but when I click on them they jump to completely different and unrelated URls? the help page you linked does to how to add an attachement... Was this a mistake?

E

EricaSholycowAuthor

Inspiring

Hi there,

Hope you are doing well, and thanks for checking all those details.

It sounds like the issue isn’t with your URLs or the InDesign setup, but specifically with how the tagged link annotations (Link OBJR) are being generated during export. When these tags are missing or pointing to the wrong destination, Acrobat’s accessibility checker will flag them, and clicking them may jump to unrelated URLs, just like you’re seeing.

A few things you can try:

1. Recreate the hyperlinks in InDesign
Sometimes InDesign doesn’t generate clean link tags if the text has been copied/pasted or spans multiple frames/lines.
Try deleting one problematic hyperlink and recreating it from scratch to see if the OBJR tags export correctly.

2. Check for split URLs or text frame breaks
If a URL flows across lines or text frames, InDesign can create multiple or fragmented link annotations, which breaks OBJR tagging.
To fix this, select the entire URL and reapply a single hyperlink to the whole string.

3. Export using “Create Tagged PDF”
Make sure:

File > Export > Adobe PDF (Interactive or Print)

In PDF export settings, under Advanced, enable Create Tagged PDF

Also, ensure Hyperlinks are checked. Skipping either option can result in missing link tags.

4. Check with Acrobat’s “Reading Order” tool
Open Tools > Accessibility > Reading Order and click on each link.
If the bounding boxes look off or multiple tags overlap, that confirms the export created broken annotations.

Hope this will help.

~Amal

Hi

I have tried multiple ways to figure out why this is happening. I have even export only the reference pages and surprisingly its suddenly generating the Link OBJRs BUT of course there are multiple OBJR for each line. I have tried to fix this by recreating deleting the link and recreating it in Acrobat. It still doesn't create the Link OBJR and EVEN when I do the trick of finding unlink annotations and tagging it I doesn't work and it incorrectly places OBJRs or doesn't do anything.

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