Inspiring

Answered

Link to a Specific Page in PDF File?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
June 13, 2017
5 replies
88335 views

I am trying to add a link in a web page to a PDF file which takes you to a particular page in the PDF file. I have followed these instructions from elsewhere on the internet and it does not to work! 😞 For example for page 4 the advice I have got is to add #page=4 to the end of the link. Thus the whole link for a file (in the same folder) which is called Script_310317.pdf would be as follows …

Script_310317.pdf#page=4

This should take you to page 4 of the PDF but it still just takes you to the top or page one of the file. What have I done wrong? I am using Safari.

Thanks for your help,

Gareth

Correct answer BenPleysier

It didn't work. it took me straight to the top of page one! :-(

I tried again with the following results

Firefox: OK
Chrome: OK
Edge: Failed
Safari: not tested
Opera: not tested

Fortunately Firefox and Chrome constitutes 90% of the browser market.

C

Cachet Design Studio

New Participant

I have found that the installed browser extension version of Adobe reader do not work. Uninstall the browser extension, let it use the simple default PDF reader instead, and a URL that has the page parameter added will now work. so adding #page=37 after .pdf in the URL string will work. It does not work in MS Edge, as the Adobe reader extension is fully embedded and you cannot remove it. It will work in Chrome and Brave. So update for everyone who is having this problem. Adobe needs to fix the user installed extension versions for the browsers.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

You've resurrected an outdated topic from 2017.

For best cross-browser results in 2025, use PDF Embed APIs.

See below for API script examples on GitHub.

https://github.com/adobe/pdf-embed-api-samples

Hope that helps.

[Outdated topic locked by moderator. Feel free to start a new topic if you need to.]

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

B i r n o u

Community Expert

did you try using a destination in within the PDF document ?

B i r n o u

Community Expert

as a test you can give it a try and see what's going on

link on the page - http://www.birnou.net/PDFs/Lorem-ipsum.pdf#page=2
link on the destination - http://www.birnou.net/PDFs/Lorem-ipsum.pdf#pagefive

M

Mekeri

New Participant

Birnou,

I just attempted your solution with the destination and used your test links as well. Safari still doesn't work and it opens the first page each time.

Thanks!

A

Anonymous

These is what I find:

#page=4 (wants the "=" sign)

Chrome browser from PC

#page4 (doesn't want "=" sign)

Chrome browser from iPhone

Safari browser from iPhone

Nothing works for Microsoft Edge browser.

Would be nice to have a common solution.

M

Mekeri

New Participant

ob63887335 wrote
These is what I find:
#page=4 (wants the "=" sign)
Chrome browser from PC
#page4 (doesn't want "=" sign)
Chrome browser from iPhone
Safari browser from iPhone
Nothing works for Microsoft Edge browser.
Would be nice to have a common solution.

That is exactly my findings. Makes putting up a pdf for the whole world to see basically impossible without breaking the PDF into pages and uploading them separately. This still doesn't work if the user may want to view other pages. Alas... not sure of a good solution here.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

PDF is media. Formerly, we had helper apps like Acrobat or Acrobat Reader plugins to view files in browsers. Now however, all browsers have dropped support for 3rd party plugins in favor of browser based APIs which are very limited in what they do.

Ideally, your PDF document will contain thumbnails or bookmarks which people can access by opening the PDF document directly in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader instead of their browsers.

Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs, Adobe Acrobat

The other option is to split your PDF into multiple files with Acrobat Pro

Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages in Adobe Acrobat

Nancy

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

BenPleysier

Community Expert

The link should include the full URL like

<a href="http://www.example.com/myfile.pdf#page=4">

Wappler is the DMXzone-made Dreamweaver replacement and includes the best of their powerful extensions, as well as much more!

Gareth_WilliamsAuthor

Inspiring

That is not possible at the moment as the pages are still only local and not yet uploaded to the web. However, I will try uploading it with the full URL and tell you how it goes. This would be …

http://www.gwilliams-designs.co.uk/Films/DrJekyll_01/Script_310317.pdf#page=4

Though as the file is in the same folder wouldn’t just the last bit (blue bit) work?

BenPleysier

Community Expert

Have a look at http://bunchoblokes.org/pdf/General-Documents/BOB-Manual.pdf#page=4

Wappler is the DMXzone-made Dreamweaver replacement and includes the best of their powerful extensions, as well as much more!

pziecina

Brainiac

You may be better advised asking in the Acrobat forum, but as a guess i would say you would also require an anchor or target 'link' in your pdf at the specific page/point for this to work.

Having said that, most browsers are now blocking the use of plug-ins such as the pdf and flash ones, and only alowing the use of the built in html5 and the pdf api for such items. Reading the pdf api, i cannot see that it allows direct linking to a specific section of a document, but as the api is based on web standards it may be that such usage is taken as a 'given'.

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