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I hope you are all well. I was wondering if I may ask you a question re Indesign - Hyperlink / URLs.
I've created a document with Hyperlinks/URLs. I would like to change the appearance or how they display. I’ve tried to research this online, but I am not getting any help or finding out how to do this. As per below, it seems to me that this is something that can not be changed, is this correct? Or do you know how I can do this.
For example, the link to the email is displaying in a crazy way e.g. (mailto:admin%40triaxial.au?subject=Triaxial%20Capability%20Statement).
I want it to display as per the correct email address (admin@triaxial.au) or not at all, and it just be the hover over hand that clicks the link.
In a Word document you have the option to change the way the text is displayed but I cant seem to do that in Indesign.
Example of how it is displaying.
Thanks for your help in advance 🙂
Maybe kind of a workaround for you - do not mark it as a hyperlink - just leave as a plain text.
If you export as an INTERACTIVE PDF - looks like at least Acrobat is automatically treating it as a clickable email.
Not sure what other readers will do...
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It's normal.
You can't have spaces so they need to be converted to "%20".
"%40" = "@"
https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.ASP
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Thanks for your reply.
Im unsure what you mean by 'normal'? Do you mean you cannot change this, there is no way to fix this, this is how it will stay and look?
I am unable to have it look as I wanted, as per my post above? There is no work around to this?
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Link in the text - as a Text - will look OK - but working URL needs to be converted to this "crazy" format.
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Im sorry I may sound really stupid here, but can you explain what I need to do in very simple terms please.
Do I copy and paste the admin@triaxial.au into the URL Encoding Functions box and then copy admin%40triaxial.au into the Indesign hyperlink box?
Or what is it I am supposed to do to fix the issue and make it look right, please explain the steps in very simple terms to someone that is very lost.
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URLs and email addresses have required coding in order to function.
In your sample:
mailto: is the code to signal that this is an email address. Note that it is lowercase, one word, with a colon.
%40 is the code to produce the @symbol in the email address. Therefore, admin%40triaxial.au = the complete email address.
?subject= is the code to automatically place the text that follows it into the subject line of the email. This is optional, but can be very helpful for marketing purposes when the email is received because it can identify the source of the email inquiry.
%20 is the code to produce a space between words. So Triaxial%20Capability%20Statement = Triaxial Capability Statement.
What you have is correct and will work when clicked by the end user. Hope this helps explain the coding!
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Thank you very much for the explanation of what it means it’s very much appreciated.
I was not actually after an explanation of the meaning behind why it is presented this way. I was trying to find out if I can change the way it is presented/looks, so it does not look that way. But just either reads as the email address only or does not come up at all and is just the hand icon, as my original post explains. I think the way it is presenting looks awful and I do not want our clients to see it looking this way.
So, I am trying to find a work around. Either to display it different or not at all, but still to be a clickable hyperlink. Is this possible to do?
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See my other post.
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For example, the link to the email is displaying in a crazy way e.g. (mailto:admin%40triaxial.au?subject=Triaxial%20Capability%20Statement).
I want it to display as per the correct email address (admin@triaxial.au) or not at all, and it just be the hover over hand that clicks the link.
By @KC_xo
What you see when you hover over the link is the encoded version of the hyperlink, not how it will be displayed on the page of your document. You can't control this, and InDesign is doing things correctly. The final visual version that users will see will be admin@triaxial.au.
FYI, hovers are not intended to be viewed by end users, so just ignore the "crazy" stuff you see. Your hyperlink is correct as is.
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Thanks for your reply.
No that unfortunately isn't correct. What I have screen shot and posted is from the PDF, and what the client will see, as that is what they are going to be sent, the interactive PDF. When the client hovers over the email address that is what comes up, the crazy looking text, the hyperlink text, the interactive text.
This is why I am trying to fix it, as it looks ugly, and spoils all the work we have been doing.
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But there is nothing else you can do.
Either it will look like this - or it will be a plain text and won't be clickable.
The only thing you can do is to drop the "subject" part - then email alone should look OK.
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I'll make a few points that the others haven't touched on.
What you have shown is a tooltip as it shows in Acrobat. Can you control the PDF reader others are using? If not, this is an exercise in futility, anyway. Additionally, Mailto is an absolutely horrific way of having people communicate with you. Again, there's no way to control what the reader is doing so there's no way to assure any will actually get the proper email tool to launch.
Finally, do you really want the world to have the email address? Link to a contact form and be done with it.
Some may disagree with these points but with PDF you're crapshoot territory because of how many PDF readers and devices are being used.
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I created the email hyerlink in Indesign, I then PDF the document as an Interactive PDF. I dont know what tooltip is?
When you say 'do you really want the world to have the email address' well they already do as they are all on our website, so how is this any different? and on our website they are hyperlinks just the same way I am trying to create them here in this document Indesign/PDF.
So I am just trying to have the same functionality with this document to make it userfriendly and interactive for our clients. So instead of the client having to retype each persons email to send an email to them, they can simply click on the email in the PDF and it will open an email to send to them.
It seems you are extremly against this, but I have seen it used in many documents by many companies?
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What you say you want, you have. A link the user can click, and have them send an email. That's how it's done.
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The tooltip is the text you're wanting to change and yes, I stand firmly behind my statement. This holds true for websites as well. If a client insisted on it, I'd use it, but I would insist on getting that direction in writing. As I already said, it's a horrible, outdated method.
You are, quite frankly, worried about the wrong thing here with that tooltip. The fact that many people won't be able to use it is what you should be concerned with.
Finally, this really has nothing to do with InDesign and there is nothing you can do to change the way that tooltip displays in any particular PDF reader application.
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And the same "crazy" preview is in every browser on html pages - in the status bar - so InDesign isn't doing anything "non standard" .
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May I ask how people should then have/use clickable, hyperlinked email addresses in their documentation or websites etc. if you believe this is not the best way to go forward?
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Maybe kind of a workaround for you - do not mark it as a hyperlink - just leave as a plain text.
If you export as an INTERACTIVE PDF - looks like at least Acrobat is automatically treating it as a clickable email.
Not sure what other readers will do...