Detecting hyperlinks on invisible objects in pdfs embedded within pdfs

[FlatheadBeacon]

Hello all,

I create a weekly news publication and we would like for all ads placed in the newspaper to have a hyperlinked box appear when you mouse over the ad, so the whole ad highlights and can be clicked on to access that particular company's website.

Here is what I've done so far. I've created an ad in InDesign where I have a layer above the layer with all of my ad content. I then draw a box in the top layer, with no line or stroke and create a hyperlink for that box. When I export this file as a pdf, I open the file in Acrobat and the hyperlink works. So this is almost exactly what I want. However, we create the ads as separate documents from the newspaper. The ads are created In Indesign, pdf'd and then placed into the newspaper InDesign working file document where the pages are then pdf'd to create the final print ready files. Now that my ad has been placed into another document that has been pdf'd, Acrobat is no longer recognizing the invisible box I created on my original ad. Is there any way to remedy this?

[George_Johnson]

Are you saying that you're placing a PDF containing the ad pages in InDesign into the newspaper InDesign document, and then exporting to PDF so you have a PDF that is newspaper+ads? It seems it would be better to either provide the InDesign file so the pages from the ads document can be copied to the newspaper document, or combine the newspaper PDF with the ads PDF in Acrobat. In either case, the links will be preserved.

[FlatheadBeacon]

The news pages are created separately from the ads. The ads are pdf'd as separate files, one for each ad. Then these pdfs are placed into the Newspaper indesign page files. This file is ultimately exported as the final pdf. At this point the links to my invisible object in my ad are no longer present. I hope that makes sense. I can't attach pdf files, but here is a jog of the ad, and then the ad placed on the newspage.

[Test Screen Name]

Yes, placed PDFs. Cannot work.

[Test Screen Name]

Placed PDFs are a purely visual thing, for printing. No interactive elements could survive such a trip, and I never heard of any system which could (it's just just InDesign).

[Luke_Jennings]

There is a work-around that might work for you, In order to include the separate linked PDF in the final PDF, create a new InDesign layer and add the content there, export your InDesign PDF with the layer turned off, but included in the PDF, then assign the buttons in Acrobat to show/hide the hidden layers. This assumes Acrobat or Reader will be used to view the final interactive PDF. Here is a link to a sample PDF that includes instructions:

Dropbox - PDF_Buttons.pdf.zip

[FlatheadBeacon]

Hey thanks Luke,

I'm not sure if this will work for what I'm trying to do. The thing I don't understand is why Acrobat will automatically detect links that are typed into an ad such as "www.advertiser.com" but it won't detect an object which has a hyperlink associated with it once it has been placed into another inDesign document and exported as a pdf. If there was a way to do this, it would be perfect!

-Steve

[Test Screen Name]

‌No hyperlinks at all can survive placing and reexporting. But Acrobst scans text for URLs at the time a page is displayed. Usually text survives as text after placing. Nothing to detect on your case, nothing at all.

[FlatheadBeacon]

Once I pdf all of the pages for the document, I can go to "Document Processing/Create Links from URLS". This command makes all URLs clickable. Even ones that were placed as pdfs into an InDesign docuement that was then pdf'd.

[Luke_Jennings]

You can convert the ad layer (the highlighted ad) to a button in InDesign, that will take you to a web address when clicked or hovered over (after editing the button in Acrobat). The highlighted ad is on a hidden layer and will only appear when the viewer clicks on the ad in the newspaper (also a button). Is this not what you are trying to do?

[FlatheadBeacon]

Hey Luke,

I'm trying to avoid the need to do any extensive manual document processing after I have created the pdf. I could just as easily draw a box around each ad and add a URL to each ad space. I'm trying to avoid doing that 90+ times each week to make every ad in our paper clickable.

[try67]

You need to change your workflow, then. Either do it all in InDesign and then export to PDF when done, or export the files to PDF, and then merge them in Acrobat. You can't go ID -> PDF -> ID -> PDF and expect it to work. It's not a good workflow.

[FlatheadBeacon]

I'm open to suggestions. We currently create the ads between a team of 4 designers so having each ad as a separate indesign doc is pretty much required. The news pages need to be separate files because only one person can work on one indesign document at a time. It's not feasible to build the ads and editorial content on one document. As far as I can see, placing the pdf'd ads in a working document with editorial is the most optimal. Any workflow ideas are welcome though, of course.

[try67]

You should try the ID forums, but Adobe definitely has products that allow for shared work on the same ID file.

[FlatheadBeacon]

I know about Incopy, but it doesn't allow for much design capability. As far as I've seen, there aren't other any solutions for multiple users on inDesign Docs. I still don't think it would be a very good idea to build ads directly onto each inDesign page.