hyperlinks in Ai

[mapusoft]

hello

i'm creating a .pdf from an Illustrator file.

the file has several web addresses which need to be hyperlinked for web use

i'm clueless, i have no web experience

all my work in the past has been print design

is this a novice or expert project?

if novice, please help!

[Guest]

You can't do this in AI. You would need to create buttons in Acrobat or Indesign.

[x-o-o-x]

Sometimes I think the people at Illustrator as nuts - why can't we do this simply like in InDesign?
Why is it they make us go to Adobe Acrobat?
MADNESS.

[ethar1]

  I'm so with you, real madness, carless folnish   

[JETalmage]

Yes you can. But in typical Illustrator fashion, the interface for the whole thing is utterly ridiculous.

The resulting PDF is here. Open it and you'll find that the URL is just text (not an image) and is a functioning hyperlink.

1. Select a text object that contains a URL.
2. Object>Slice>Make.
3. Object>Slice>SliceOptions.
4. Slice Type: HTML Text. Turn on the Text is HTML checkbox. Note that the "Text Displayed in Cell" is not, in fact, the text displayed in the cell, but HTML code. Note that you can't edit the code.

If you must do this kind of thing in Illustrator, look up Slices in the online Help for more info.

If, as you say, you're not a web-head, but you want to see how easy building a perfectly sensible simple web page in a drawing program can be, download a demo of Xara Xtreme 5 Pro and try it out for a few days.

JET

[schonj2]

JETAlmage - great info thanks, helped alot. If you want to hyperlink a logo or an image,which illustrator doesnt allow you to do, you can do this: Place the image where you want it, lock it down. Write the URL to the page you want in a font just large enough to cover the image, if its too wide and not tall enough, make a couple lines of the same URL. Then, do what JETalmage says to do (below), then make the font 0-1% opaqe over the image (it wasnt working for me on 0% opageness.

1. Select a text object that contains a URL.
2. Object>Slice>Make.
3. Object>Slice>SliceOptions.
4. Slice Type: HTML Text. Turn on the Text is HTML checkbox. Note that the "Text Displayed in Cell" is not, in fact, the text displayed in the cell, but HTML code. Note that you can't edit the code.

[juli-jam]

I found a really easy solution by mistake.

1) Create the hyperlink in Microsoft Word (like an email address or web link). Save the file.

2) Go to your open Illustrator file.

3) File --> Place

4) Select the saved Word document to place. Make sure that you do not check the "remove text formatting" box.

5) Voilà! Your hyperlinks are imported and work when saved as a PDF.

[bernardoâ25569147]

It works!

Thanks a lot Juli-Jam!

[tontl19071602]

Thank you so much! You saved my life!

[runninghead_design]

Sorry to not contribute to the discussion here but... Illustrator... lol

[TheSmallMonsters]

Actually, I just found a slightly easier way.

Write out the URL, and highlight it. Then, in the Attributes panel choose <Image Map: Rectangle>. In the <URL> field retype your URL. When you save the document as a PDF, the written URL will then be clickable.

I'm guessing this is too late for you, but maybe it will come up for the next person.

[JETalmage]

The,

You do understand, don't you?: That's not a simple text hyperlink; it's an image map.

JET

[Guest]

And yet, it does not work for me with hyperlinked images on a Mac. The resulting PDF, when opened with Adobe Reader or Acrobat, contains no hyperlinks; however, if I open the PDF with Illustrator, the links are still there. So, the resulting PDF file contains the hyperlink information, but does not make it accessible to Reader or Acrobat.

How can Adobe possibly create software with such a flawed, incompatible feature?

[Eric_Segeren]

"How can Adobe possibly create software with such a flawed, incompatible feature?"

It's pretty simple - they didn't really intend for people to be trying to make interactive PDFs in Illustrator. What everyone has describe here are more or less workarounds.

If you have access to InDesign, I'd very much suggest you do it there.

[Guest]

Definitely helped the next person. Thank you so much so the much needed solution.

[dana-leighc87044580]

It worked...this si great...doesn't matter that its an image map...it worked and it was simple! THANK YOU!

[GrafeekDesign]

This is a bit late, but I have found another way to attach urls to items in Illustrator (CS5).

1. Open the 'Attributes' tool panel CTRL+F11 or Windows >  Attributes
2. Select the item you want to add a url to
3. Select either polygon or rectangle from the 'image map' drop down
4. Type a url in the box below

You can test the link by clicking on the 'browser' button

[Bert_Philippus-Vf91WV]

Thu,

You do understand, don't you?: That's not a simple text hyperlink; it's an image map.

Bert (Plagiarized from JET's earlier post)

[CRAIG23211880j0eg]

Yes, now try to save or export to PDF and let me know if the link is still there. 

[DavidxMartins]

This is the only thing that works for me. Thank you.

[SageofthePit]

I love how, in true Illustrator fashion, there are 12 different ways to accomplish the same end effect.

(note: this is obviously an exaggeration, there actaully 300+ ways to do the same thing in Illustrator)

[Silkrooster]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were that many ways to do something. I haven't seen anybody say to edit the ai file or pdf file in notepad yet. Ooops, I just did. But then again I never tried it.

[NICOSBO]

And i want to add one more, maybe the most unorthodox but yet, simplier. I type or paste the URL behind the text that reffer to ths site you wanna go. BUT, the URL goes white (or the color of your background, or with 0 opacity). So, on click, th eURL will attempt to open like you want.

Oh, and working the scale nodes, can give the text the shape you want, that matches the text visible.

Cheers, sorry my english, argentinian english.

NICO

[billv8393]

This worked easily just as Nico describes. I copied the very long HTTP link to the drawing; sized it by pulling/squeezing the "handles" so it was the same size as the word I wanted to be the link; set opacity to 0, which made it disappear; put it on top of the text I wanted to be the hyperlink, then pushed it to the back (which, since the opacity was 0, was really unnecessary). Finally, I made the visible link word blue and put a line under it so it would look like a hyperlink. I then re-embedded the drawing in the FrameMaker file. As I expected, the hyperlink did NOT work from Frame (which a link created WITH Frame will do, if you hold down Ctrl+Alt and click it) — but when I PDFed the FrameMaker document file in which the drawing (and link) appeared, the hyperlink in the PDF worked perfectly. This is ridiculously easy. Thanks Nico!

I consider this a solved problem.

Remember: Doing it this way actually puts the hypertext information IN THE DRAWING, and it should work IN THE PDF containing this drawing regardless of what apps you put it through to get it finally into PDF. This is far preferable than creating a link in the PDF file, which you would have to keep recreating every time it went through a rev roll. Whenever possible, you want to do any permanent editing in the tool you're using to create the source material — in this case, Illustrator.

Bill

Rio Rancho, NM

[romearrow]

I've tried all of the above suggestions to no avail, but something that looks like it worked for me is to insert the link into the PDF using Acrobat (I'm using Acrobat 9 Pro), not Illustrator. I'm planning to attach the PDF I created in Illustrator to an email and want the link in it to be clickable when the recipients open the PDF.

What I found instructions online to do is to have the PDF open in Acrobat, and up on the top toolbar, click Tools > Advanced Editing... > Link Tool. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair with which you can select the area of the PDF image that you want to be a link.

Once done selecting, a dialog box will open, prompting you to choose whether you want the link area you just selected to be visibly outlined or invisible, then what you want a click on the area to do (I chose "Open a web page").

Click "Next", type or copy/paste the URL into the provided box, and click "OK". Now the link is clickable in the open PDF.

Hope this works for others (and for my recipients!).