Known Participant

Question

InDesign endnotes – split URLs not converting as active hyperlinks in PDF

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
August 22, 2018
4 replies
1778 views

Have a long report with refs and 214 endnotes – imported from Word.
Active links to main text.
Where I have a two column grid, in the Endnotes, the URLs split and in some instances this causes problems making active links to the hyperlink.

Have tried trouble shooting and editing, some still appear red in the Interactive hyperlink panel.
It seems that InDesign can only detect the first part

Any advice?
Many thanks,

Hils

This topic has been closed for replies.

hammer0909

Community Expert

Just to be clear, I suggested that you delete the hyperlink not the endnote. Go back and read my instructions again. Deleting the hyperlink won’t affect the endnote.

H

hilsraliveAuthor

Known Participant

Apologies. I have just done so and understand what you mean. I'm afraid these terms do seem to blur in my brain.

The hyperlink is just the link not the URL.

And a hyperlink can be used on other things as well.

I have copied and pasted your note for reference.

Thanks for your patience.

hammer0909

Community Expert

Not a problem. Let's start with the text. The actual text which can be the url or any other text for that matter is just text. When you highlight the text and create a hyperlink in InDesign using the hyperlinks panel, that hyperlink is attached to the text and becomes a clickable link in the exported file (I think PDF in your case). So deleting the hyperlink in the Hyperlinks panel and selecting the text and creating a new hyperlink won't affect the text at all. Also, it's worth mentioning in your case that the original text that I was referring to is also an Endnote. But that is irrelevant in this discussion. We're not affecting the Endnote in any way, just the contents of the Endnote itself. Hopefully that helps.

TᴀW

Legend

Have you actually converted these URLs to hyperlinks? Or are you just opening the PDF in Acrobat and finding that some work and some don't?

If you haven't actually converted them to hyperlinks, then you're relying on Acrobat reading them and converting them to links automatically. Line breaks could mess that up.

If you have used InDesign's "Convert URLs to Hyperlinks" feature, you're probably just suffering from the fact that that feature is inadequately written and doesn't work well with long URLs.

In that case (shameless plug warning), I would recommend our Hyperlink Pro | Id-Extras.com add-on, which will do the job properly, convert all hyperlinks, and even adhere to the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual's recommendations for permissible line breaks for long URLs...

Ariel

Visit www.id-extras.com for powerful InDesign scripts that save hours of work — automation, batch tools, and workflow boosters for serious designers.

H

hilsraliveAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks Ariel, I did use the Indesign 'Convert URLs to hyperlinks' feature and also tried to do them in individual cases pasting in the appropriate url and tried experimenting with the links in the Interactive > hyperlinks > panel.

So from what you are saying InDesign's inbuilt setting won't cut it and it is unsolvable without a special plugin? 47$?

Magazines sometimes use a facility to make tiny urls to overcome the problem and save space.

H

hilsraliveAuthor

Known Participant

hilsralive wrote
One last thing – how do I delete my pic or that post? I can't see a way to do it. Sorry if being thick.

Done.

Thank you.

hammer0909

Community Expert

Sure you can delete it when we’re done. To be clear, is the link not working when you export to PDF or another format or are you referring to the red dot that appears in the Hyperlinks panel within InDesign? Links to files (in your case PDF) always show as an error because InDesign can’t authenticate the path to the file. The link will still work when exported though.

H

hilsraliveAuthor

Known Participant

Yes the format we need with working links is PDF, exported from InD doc.

Yes it is the PDF that has some of the links are working and some not – sorry not be clearer before.

The hyperlinks panel I just found recently whilst trying to find the root of the problems. I only mentioned because I thought it might help shed some light on the matter. (Some of links in InD hyperlinks panel status show as green, some as red, some as grey.)

hammer0909

Community Expert

Are you by any chance using soft returns to force break those URLs? Are they all failing or just some of them?

H

hilsraliveAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you for your reply.

No not using soft returns to break them.
Not all of them failing – some are ok.
I did find something about 'shared destinations' that might cause a problem and unchecked this – but didn't make any difference.

hammer0909

Community Expert

Are only urls that break across a line failing or are some that break across a line working? Can you send a screen shot with your hidden characters showing?

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