Some hyperlinks not connecting in ID 15.01

[Nedlaw]

I am creating an ID document that includes hyperlinks. Some hyperlinks connect to the client's own corporate site, and some connect to US government (public) sites.

Of five links (four corporate and one government), InDesign gives me a red light on one corporate and one government site. I have been to both URLs in a browser (no special passwords required) and both sites are up and working. Other corporate sites respond with a green light, one does not.

This may be because of the way ID looks up its DNS entries... but maybe not. I have carefully looked at the URLs, even copying them from the browser address bar and pasting them into the InDesign hyperlink dialog. I've checked for oddball characters, leading and trailing spaces. I'm at a loss. Two of the five URLs work in a browser, but do not work in InDesign. Is this a known bug?

Thanks for any help.

-j

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Have you tested the links in a PDF? Are they still "broken"?

[Nedlaw]

What an interesting idea. Just tried the PDF test -- and the link produces a 404 (Page not found) at the correct web site. So: it gets me to the right web site, but the link doesn't resolve to the right page... and yet, when pasted into a browser, it does.

Something is wrong with my link, obviously. Thanks for the tip, but no resolution yet.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Any chance the links are breaking across a line break?

[Nedlaw]

The text in the ID document certainly breaks across a line in one case, but the https:// link text that it calls when clicked appears as a single line in the ID Hyperlink dialog box. It's not like the link appears in the text of the document -- only in the Hyperlink dialog.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Any chance on seeing the file? If not, can you recreate it in another ID file and share it?

[Nedlaw]

I can try to recreate it in anothner file. I've asked in the past, and the client is NOT WILLING to have me post work in progress...

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Totally understand. Are the links causing the problem publicly accessible? I can try to reproduce the problem on my end.

[Nedlaw]

Resolved, but still puzzled. One of the red lights was a legitimate 404 -- how and why it worked previously when I copied and pasted it into the address bar of the browser, I cannot answer. A revised link from the client solved the problem. The other -- a link to a page on the client's own website -- was resolved when I retyped the link into ID's Hyperlink dialog box. As far as I can tell, the new link I typed was exactly like the old link that I had also typed (not copy/pasted). Now it seems to work.

So as I say... resolved but puzzled. My suggestion to myself and others is to try copy/pasting a link first... but if it doesn't immediately work, then try typing it in. This will avoid invisble characters that might have been added by the document where you obtained the link.