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chrisr38361145
Participant
May 20, 2012
Answered

Losing links when saving Word 2011 Mac to Acrobat Pro X 10.1.3

  • May 20, 2012
  • 18 replies
  • 126218 views

I've searched online for an answer, but can't find anything.  I jus started noticing that when I save a Word doc (2011 for Mac) to a PDF, the links in my document no longer work in the PDF.

Any ideas why this is happening and how to fix it?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer CtDave

    In Windows Acrobat's PDFMaker migrates Office hyperlinks to PDF Link annotations.

    This involves a Windows OS - Office application - Acrobat interaction that is not available for the Mac.

    Be well...

    18 replies

    D
    dot-dot
    Participant
    June 5, 2017

    Best option was one provided in the thread to use Dropbox.  Open the document (docx) from within Dropbox using your browser and Word Online.  Then print the document from within Word Online.  This will automatically render the document into PDF format complete with all active links and custom document formatting retained.  Then download this pdf document to your desktop.  This is the only solution that has worked for me from completely within a Mac environment.  Alternatively, if you have a partitioned drive using Parallels, you can open the document using Word for PC and save to PDF which does the same thing.

    Word for Mac 2011 vs. 14.7.3

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    January 31, 2017

    What version of Word do you have?

    H
    hritz
    Participant
    January 31, 2017

    Word for Mac v.15.9

    TanviRastogi
    Adobe Employee
    TanviRastogi
    Adobe Employee
    January 31, 2017

    Hi

    Please update your Office version. It's quite outdated. Link feature is supported in 15.22 version or higher.

    Thanks

    Tanvi

    H
    hritz
    Participant
    January 31, 2017

    Thanks. I'm seriously annoyed I just spend all this time creating my index and links in word and they won't move over. This is ridiculous and a huge waste of time ADOBE you make me very mad!

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    January 31, 2017

    Upgrade.

    H
    hritz
    Participant
    January 31, 2017

    Upgrade to what? I'm actually on DC and it doesn't work. It just doesn't work with MACs. Adobe needs to do the upgrade!
    I went to some word-to-pdf website and it worked with all the links. (I get one more freebie from them!)

    rchrdfrdmn
    rchrdfrdmn
    Participating Frequently
    November 11, 2015

    It appears that the problem is associated with comments (and probably change tracking) in the Word file.

    I have been able to get around the problem and generate a correct PDF with all the links, explicit, implicit, and cross-reference, working by observing the following:

    1. make sure you have the latest Adobe and MS Word 2011 for Mac

    2. delete all comments and accept all changes

    3. always use File->Save As Adobe PDF to generate the PDF

    So far this seems to be working for all my past problematic files. Give it a try.

    Kudos to TanviRastogi for investigating this issue. Clearly, Adobe knows about it.

      rchrdfrdmn
      rchrdfrdmn
      Participating Frequently
      November 4, 2015

      This situation is totally ridiculous.

      I have all the updated software, and am using Word 2011 rev 14.5.7

      Using File->Save As Adobe PDF sometimes works, but most of the time it doesn't, and when it doesn't I get the message from Adobe PDFmaker:  "Links in this document could not be retained in the converted PDF" with no further explanation.


      However, LibreOffice works fine. It took me a while to migrate my doc file to LibreOffice 5. And altho moving to yet another authoring environment is always a pain, I just might kiss MS Word goodbye once and for all. Now, if only LO was more stable.


      The only other recourse is to use the Convert to PDF tool in Adobe Reader DC. Yes, the links work, but it doesn't like my fonts (I'm using Open Sans). The converted PDF doesn't look like the PDF produced by Save As Adobe PDF in Word. Go figure.


      What a nightmare.

      TanviRastogi
      Adobe Employee
      TanviRastogi
      Adobe Employee
      November 4, 2015

      Hi

      Can you please share some test files where you are getting the message "Links in this document could not be retained in the converted PDF" ?

      You can share them via Dropbox or Document Cloud.


      Thanks

      Tanvi

      rchrdfrdmn
      rchrdfrdmn
      Participating Frequently
      November 4, 2015

      The interesting thing is that after making sure that I had the latest Office 2011, and updated to the latest Acrobat DC, and rebooted the Mac (it's at MacOS 10.10.2)  all but one of my word docx files now will generate links in the PDF and do not get the "Links were not retained" when using File->Save As Adobe PDF.

      But one long docx still gets the message and fails to get proper links.

      It would be interesting to know what's unique about this file.

      I will send you something by dropbox and private message sometime later today. I (and everyone else) appreciate your interest.

      J
      jeremys21489227
      Participant
      August 17, 2015

      One solution I have found for external links has been to use the free online word to pdf converters. A simple search and you can find many. I have not tried this with internal document links but have read a few posts where others have been successful in doing so.

      1. Save file .docx (Mac Word 2011)
      2. Upload and convert file to PDF online.

      Done!

      I
      icfm
      Participating Frequently
      August 17, 2015
      A
      Anonymous
      July 16, 2015

      I'd like to point out an option I haven't seen mentioned here. It is possible to directly save Word 2011 documents as PDF files and have the links be active, but there are two unpleasant restrictions on this - specifically, the display text must be the complete URL (i.e., it must be the same as the link text), and the display text must be entirely on one line. Obviously this is unsatisfactory in many cases, but it's good to know for the occasional situation where it is acceptable.

      I'll also mention that if you right-click a hyperlink in a Word 2011 document, and select "Copy Hyperlink", what gets copied is actually the display text rather than the link. In fact, the link can be gibberish provided that the display text is a valid link, and the resulting PDF file will have functional links. Makes me wonder if the problem is really just a simple Microsoft field name coding error.

      A
      Anonymous
      August 13, 2015

      Another option you can try to get hyperlinks to appear in a pdf:

      1. create your document in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac. then insert a blank line right above the text where you want the hyperlink to appear.
      2. copy and paste the full link onto this line. reduce the font size so that it just fits above your text
      3. highlight the link and change the line spacing to 1.0
      4. keep the link highlighted and change the font color to white - so that the link appears invisible in the pdf you will create
      5. go to the file menu and choose 'save as...'
      6. in the drop down box choose 'pdf' and save
      7. open your pdf and hover your mouse over where the text and link should be. the mouse will change to the 'hand' indicating there is a hyperlink there. if you hover for a couple of seconds, a popup will display the link so that you can double check that the URL is correct. click on it and you are good to go.

      with these steps you maintain all formatting. You also don't need to forgo using MS Word altogether,  or switch to using other software just to get hyperlinks to appear.

      hope this helps.

      A
      Anonymous
      June 25, 2015

      Try Dropbox.

      After the Google Drive options failed for me (too much formatting lost) I had a look to see whether Dropbox offered any similar options and saw that they now have integration with Word Online (that one passed me by). After uploading and opening my Word docx in Dropbox (via browser) I was able then to open with Word Online and export as PDF. All links were included and no formatting was (obviously) lost.

      Presumably OneDrive, or any other way to access Word Online, will offer the same.

      Hope this helps someone.

      Yosemite, Acrobat 8 (!), Word 2011

        A
        active_innovatorB82C
        Participant
        November 23, 2015

        The Word Online–to-PDF approach did save the links but converted my Helvetic Neue Light heds (i.e., headlines) to something you'd use on a wanted poster in the Old West. Argh.

        A
        Anonymous
        March 23, 2015

        I'm trying to convert a Word for Mac 2011 (v14.4.8) document to PDF on a MacBook Pro running 10.6.8. It's my 250-page dissertation and is the first time I've cared about preserving active links from a Table of Contents or cross-references. I've purchased & used Adobe Acrobat Pro since on PC and Mac since 2004 (currently I use Acrobat Pro v9.5.5), and discovering this limitation now is so disappointing. How can Adobe, Microsoft, and Mac still not learn to play nice !?!

        Anyway, I tried the Google Drive workarounds but Lumin PDF Viewer fails because of my large document size. I also tried importing my Word document to Open Office and converting to PDF from there - didn't work, links weren't active. I don't have Pages, so I haven't tried that solution from Phillip Jones. I tried opening my Word document on an old PC I have that runs Microsoft Word 2003 and Acrobat Pro 7.0, but the Word formatting got all messed up when going that far back within Word.

        My only remaining idea is to go find a PC running a more current version of Word, open it there, and convert to PDF on the PC. Anyone tried that?

        What a pain ...

        L
        lydiatheys
        Participant
        March 30, 2015

        I have been having the same problem and it is driving me crazy. The older version of Pages will preserve links, but I cannot get it to open my docx files (quite large) reliably. I lose all sorts of formatting. Same with the Google Drive solution, although I appreciate the suggestion. I have been using a product from Iskysoft for editing PDFs and it works but it is a real pain to have to do the links there after all the changes have been made in word. And then the client wants a change, and I have to make it in Word and redo all the links.

        This is not to mention that I am using text on most pages in large text boxes, and Word messes that up big time to begin with--can't find things, etc--so this is just another layer of crazy on top of an already kind of crazy pie!

        Good luck and if you find a nice solution, please post! I am thinking of cranking up an older Mac Mini and running Windows in a partition so I can use a Windows copy of Word to finish files and put in links. It just should not be this way!

        B
        byebyenight
        Participant
        January 27, 2015

        uploaded the original file (doc or docx) to Google Drive. Right click on the file and open with Google Drive Viewer. Then Click on the Print icon on the top, you'll see a popup window (you can choose to cancel) and a new tab. In the new tab, click on the save icon in the right bottom corner.

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