Hyperlink issue when exporting from Word to Indesign

Hi Patrick,

I found your post as I was looking for a solution to a similar problem. I subsequently found some success with this: In InDesign, I chose to "Place" the Word file, selecting the "Show Import Options", and then selecting "Preserve Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables". After I "Shift+Entered" to place the text, I was able to place my cursor on the hyperlinks, right click, choose 'hyperlinks' from the right-click menu, then choose 'edit hyperlinks' to edit the URL, appearance, etc.  While these hyperlinks never populated in my InDesign hyperlink menu in list form, the content was availble in each hyperlink location using this method. When I exported from InDesign to INTERACTIVE PDF (it defaults to a print pdf if you don't change it in the drop down file type), it brought with it all the hyperlink content to the new pdf.  Hope this works in your case. 

I think your issue is with importing hyperterxt links from MSWord. As in, InDesign really doesn't do that well at all.

Of course in .doc files, the illusion of hyperlinks is just that. MSWord's .doc files are purely text-based, word processing files. The supposed hyperlink will be indicated with blue-colored text and/or underlining, but there is no link. Only text. Even though the coloring that indicates there should be one.

That's often the case with .docx files too. At least theoretically, .docx files can contain hypertext properties, including links. But when you bring that into InDesign, depending on which version of the program you're using, they won't exist at all. Or even worse, something may come across but it will be malformed. Your Links panel isn't lying to you. If you don't see a link in the panel, it means no link is there. All the text formatting indicating a link is there, but clicking on it will only select the text and there's no underlying hypertext function. You can always check how hyperlinks are working in your InDesign documents by creating an Acrobat PDF file and testing the links in the resulting .pdf file.

But your question was how you can easily clean up the errant hypertext appearance and place your own correct hyperlinks.

I'd suggest this workflow:

1. Create a character style that mirrors your regular paragraph style exactly. Same size, same font, same non-hyperlink color. Name that style No Hyperlink. This may seem to be redundant, but it is not.
2. After knowing from your resulting test PDF file which links don't work (don't be surprised to find it's all of them) highlight each errant hyperlink in succession and —

• Go to the Character Styles panel and change it to No Hyperlink, removing the illusion that a hyperlink is there, then
• Go to the Links panel and select the New Hyperlink... menu command from the flyaway menu. Direct the link where you want it to go and how you want to have it formatted.

The end result will be that not only does it look like a hyperlink is there, but you'll know that a hyperlink actually is there.

Hope this helps,

Randy

Are you using Place, or cutting and pasting? The latter can be problematic with links (including things like foot and end notes).

Place the whole doc in a temporary text frame and then cut and paste from there, if you have to. (Or even an interim ID doc — that is, if you need to cut and paste chunks and aren't trying to import/place whole articles at once.)