Why are my links invisible? - Acrobat link styles not visible after export.

[AdamInstem]

I've been working on some interactive PDFs in Acrobat, but regardless of which visibility settings or "highlight" styles I choose, links are always completely invisible inside other programs after export.

The links work, they're just invisible. It's important that my co-workers can see the clickable areas inside the document, because there's gonna be a bunch of them, and not all of my colleagues will have Adobe Reader.

Example export settings:

Exported result inside Chrome and Edge:

To clarify, this happens with any combination of visibility and highlight styles.

These PDFs have been exported from a fully-up-to-date Acrobat.

I've tested the exported PDFs in fully-up-to-date Chrome and Edge. But Firefox does work!

Does anyone know what I might be doing wrong?

[AdamInstem]

I've also attached the example PDF, so please feel free to scrutinise my work!

[Bernd Alheit]

The link is visible in Acrobat Reader DC and Adobe Acrobat DC.

[AdamInstem]

Apologies, I've clarified my question. The links work fine while you're inside Adobe's own PDF engine, which Acrobat and Reader both share. After exporting, I tried my PDFs around the web, and results are mixed. I've just found that they work correctly in Firefox for example.

[Bernd Alheit]

Chrome and Edge uses their own PDF viewer.

[ls_rbls]

Hi,

It seems like it could be lack of a feature or a bug that hasn't been reported to Adobe yet.

I've reproduced the same scenario in my computer and had the same issue.

It seems like the feature of making it invisible to place on top of an image is always set to invisible. It doesn't matter if you uncheck this preference.

However, if you need the actual URL link to be set visible  for your PDF users,  my workaround is very simple.

You can create a text field object, type in , or copy & paste your link in it.  Set your border and colors, etc.

Then add your javascript action as normal. Lock the field so that your PDF users doen't mess around with it.

You can do the same using Edit Text & Images.

From the tool bar, select Add Image to add  an .png or .jpeg image  onto your PDF; select  Add Text to add a text floating frame in which  you can paste in or type the desired URL (that  allows your users to  see it as if it was an actual hyperlink embedded in your PDF).

the nice thing about using this method is that it resembles similar MS Word word processing text editing, by which you can arrange or align these objects in a variety of ways like, bring forward, send to back, etc front, send backward, etc.

Next, right-click on the image frame or text field  to select "Create link" and that's it!

NOTE: You can submit a feature request or report a suspected bug using this form:

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html 

[AdamInstem]

Thanks very much. Since posting I've researched more and I think it might be individual vendor support that's patchy. Firefox works fine for example!

I also found this bug ticket on the Chromium forums that's been open since 2013 for what I think is this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=237527

It seems surprising to me that more people haven't noticed this though.

[ls_rbls]

You're welcome.  Good to know that.

Thank you actually from bringing this forward. Don't forget to voice your request using the wishform.

[Test Screen Name]

A bug, I’d say, and of course not in Adobe software. The fact is these link styles are very rarely used, they don’t match end users expectations of what a link looks like. Instead links use the more common conventions of underlines, coloured text, and so forth. There is no magic to show links in this style, so the style changes form part of the job of making the document. Ideally you’d use an authoring tool which both does the style changes and adds the links. Then there is zero to do in Acrobat.