Hyperlink Issue

[James Birks]

Hi,

I'm hoping somebody might be able to help with an issue I'm having.

I've created an Indesign document for a client. The document has hyperlinks included that link to files on the clients' server, i.e H:\2 Client Name\Folder\Word.doc

When I create an interactive PDF from the Indesign file, the hyperlinks work fine if the PDF is opened in Acrobat, but if the PDF is opened in a web browser (the clients' system opens PDFs in a browser by default) the file hyperlinks do not work. I understand this is due to browser security and file hyperlinks are unable to be opened from a browser.

To try and overcome this, I have recreated the hyperlinks as URL's rather than FILE links because the client is using Sharepoint so I was hoping I could make the links work this way. The tricky part is that the client is using some software called Zeedrive. So, the links the client supplies are all prefixed with: zeedrive://Client Name/Folder/Word.doc (for example). The resultant PDF I create means that the links are clickable and they do open a new browser tab, but Indesign strips out the colon (:) after the word zeedrive. I'm guessing it has something to do with it expecting to see https:// rather than zeedrive://.

Does anybody know if a) is there a way around this? I'm running out of ideas.

I've created an example PDF with buttons and an illustration of the FILE path and the URL link. Clicking the green buttons will illustrate how the colon (:) is getting stripped out. VIEW HERE

Any help would be hugely appreciated,

James

[Randy Hagan]

Alas, no. If you're using a URL link, it's going to have to have a typical URL naming convention. Prefixing with zeedrive://... is not one of them.

Perhaps, rather than trying to use SharePoint, your client, or you, can post the end information off the links on a dedicated intranet or internet site. That would allow you to use conventional URL addressing (e.g. http://, https://, ftp:// etc.)  to serve the info you want to associate with the links.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[Eric Dumas]

I use https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/libraryname/filename.extension and that works well for me. Only users with authorised accesst o SharePoint can access the files.

[James Birks]

Thanks Eric,

Appreciate your help and that's definitelysomething I will investigate with my clients' IT Support. They have a very strange implementation of Sharepoint which is why the Zeedrive application is being used, not sure why. If it's ultimately a Sharepoint solution though, I have a suspicion there must be a way to access the files using the method you've suggsted.

Really appreciate you taking the time to post — thank you!

[James Birks]

Hi Randy,

Thanksa lot for taking the time to reply. That's certainly an good suggestion. I will investigate.

Appreciate your help,

James