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Amelia26582338bfi3
Known Participant
January 12, 2023
Question

Hyperlinks in Epub

  • January 12, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 8641 views

I've set up hyperlinks in my eBook to an external URL, but they don't work when I export the file as reflowable epub. I've opoened the file on both kindle previewer 3 and on my kindle, but there's no recognition that they are even hyperlinks.

When I export as interactive PDF, the hyperlinks do work.

Is there something extra I have to do to activate them for epub?! Maybe something in the export options?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

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    1 reply

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    January 12, 2023

    If they are set up correctly, they should work in the EPUB export. There are no settings or options that would affect this.

     

    However, Kindle (mostly the reader) is a selective place for outside links. Not all of the hardware readers support outside web pages, since Kindle is a more or less closed ecosystem. I can't always get a perfectly-formed URL to open in Kindle Previewer, for example, even when it does in the EPUB reader Calibre.

     

    Try this: open the EPUB itself in Thorium or Calibre Reader and see if the links work there.

     

    And if it does work, note that it didn't open in the EPUB viewer... but by passing the address to your browser. Very few "readers" of any kind, EPUB included, open web pages natively like a browser.

     

    ETA: a few more things. First, loading EPUB files to a Kindle through the email process is not any kind of useful test, of either Kindle or EPUB. Although Amazon kind of made a big deal about being able to 'side load' EPUBs, it's actually through a conversion process that doesn't necessarily preserve the file's EPUB characteristics. Other than to just put an EPUB on your Kindle for reading, don't use this process for any kind of testing or evaluation.

     

    Also, Kindle Previewer can be very fussy about links, since it expects to activate them through a touch screen. Try clicking in all places on what's supposed to be a link, especially along the bottom border. The actual click-zone in Previewer can be a very thin line.

     

      A
      Amelia26582338bfi3Author
      Known Participant
      January 12, 2023

      Thanks, they do work in Calibre. But from what you say re Kindle and EPUB, if I'm just putting my eBook up on KDP select, so it will appear nowhere for sale other than Amazon, should I forget hyperlinks? Thanks!

      A
      Amelia26582338bfi3Author
      Known Participant
      January 13, 2023

      Okay. Hmm. Again, this is a fairly simple process and there are not many points where things can go wrong (such as a complicated export menu or other downstream hurdles).

       

      Create a very simple document, create a link or two in it, and export that to EPUB 3 to see if the links work.

       

      Or, your working doc may be corrupted. Try exporting it to IDML, then opening and save again as INDD (under a new name — don't overwrite your current files for a process like this), and see if that one exports correctly. There are many small glitches a document can acquire in multiple editing and saves and so forth, and this "cleanout" process can fix them.

       


      Ah, thank you, you've provided a clue that was the answer. The hyperlinks exist on the copyright page and on a page with an image - with the object export options just for these pages I had chosen to 'rasterise container' and hence the hyperlinks worked in PDF not Epub! SO if I chose this export option for these pages, is there any way of inserting a hyperlink? Or perhaps turning the whole page into a button / hyperlink? If I don't do this, the formatting goes seriously astray depending on the device used

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