Can you hyperlink to an external document?

[bowen192]

Hello ,

As the title says, can you hyperlink in Framemaker to an external document?

The hyperlink will need to be clickable once converted to pdf.

[bowen192]

Sorry Matt, but it IS a local mapped drive location, hence the server URL.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

This is tough to troubleshoot via email, and I had a client reschedule today. I'd be happy to take a look at it for a few minutes. Would you like me to take a look at it via Connect?

[bowen192]

That's very generous of you, Matt.

I thought I got it workming for a second.

I navigated to the folder of the file in my browser.  I then clicked the file I wanted linking to.  It showed the file in the browser with the following address:

file://localhost/S:/Technical%20Publications/Documents/TS01090-A%20-%20Issue%20003.pdf

I pasted this in the Hypertext pod and now it opens from Framemaker when I click it... but it doesn't work from the pdf.  In fact, it can't even see a link.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

Almost there...

I believe the %20 characters are spaces, and as Colum mentioned above, those are a bad idea in network paths.

Remove any special characters from the server path and file name, update the marker to reflect the new path & you're done.

[bowen192]

Yes, yes and yes!

It actually works with the %20, but I didn't check the Generate Acrobat  Data box.

Spot on that, Matt.  I'm  pretty chuffed with that!

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it.

EDIT: Just to clarify what I did:

In Explorer, navigate to file containing the document

Copy address from Explorer navigation bar

Paste address in to the browser

Click name of file you want to link to

Copy address from browser address bar

In Framemaker select; Element Tag: <Unstructured>, Command: Go to URL

Paste clipboard after message URL

Click Edit Hypertext Marker.

Don't forget to check the Generate Acrobat Data box in Print Document when printing!

It would also be a good idea to create a character design (say underline and blue) that could be used to show where the link was (cheers, Error7103).