Distressed with PDF linking out of Word 2008

[herojig]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Arg. I can create a toc in Word 2007 and create a pdf using "Save as PDF" but I can't then edit that file in Word 2008 and get a PDF made on the mac side with links intact. In fact, I can't create a PDF at all that has hot links within the doc (TOC, TOT, cross-refs, etc.). This is very distressing as I am forced to fire up Parallels and use word 2007 to create/edit files where I need PDFs with links. Please help! thx,
jigs

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi jigs,

there is nothing you can do; Word 2008 does not create hyperlinks when
generating PDF files. The only alternatives are to insert links manually
using Adobe Acrobat or to use Word 2007 instead (which does support this
feature).

 

[herojig]

Aw no way! Do you know of a tool that will automatically create links somehow in a PDF? If there is not one, that means that I will have to start authoring in Windoze again. Ick. Unless there is another word processor like the open source stuff, or perhaps Pages? Seems like having a "hot" table of contents is pretty basic stuff. Well, thx again for your great support, even if its news...
jigs

 

[herojig]

....bad news... meant to say in last post.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Aw no way! Do you know of a tool that will automatically create links
somehow in a PDF? If there is not one, that means that I will have to
start authoring in Windoze again. Ick. Unless there is another word
processor like the open source stuff, or perhaps Pages? Seems like
having a "hot" table of contents is pretty basic stuff. Well, thx
again for your great support, even if its news...

The full version of Acrobat is suppose to preserve hyperlinks when
making a PDF from a Word document. I've never tried it so try to test first.

--

bill

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[herojig]

on further thinking, perhaps what's missing is the equivalent to SaveAsPDFandXPS.exe, but for the mac. I remember now having to install this to get Word 2007 to behave. hmmmm....

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

This question comes up in Acrobat. and support people in the Acrobat
Forums Claim that MS has left some required Hooks out of the Office Mac
applications where Office PC does.

Is this just a case of "its you, not me. No its you and not me!" and one
or the other want lift a finger to fix. Or is it something MS has
decided once again to get a dig in on the Mac platform be deliberately
leaving something out so to frustrate Mac users and make them abandon
the Mac Platform for PC. Or is is something that the Mac BU just can't
get a handle on and figure out how to fix. The Acrobat Forums claim That
Acrobat Mac has the necessary code on their end, just MS doesn't have on
their end.

I must tell you adding a link in Acrobat is or was one more PIA to do.
First you have to manually change the color of what you want to become a
link then you have to add a underline element manually. Then you have to
go and create the actual link when all that should happen is That it
should read mailto: or URL (http://, ftp:// and so on) should
automatically become active like it does in mail and news clients. It
shouldn't even depend upon anything from another program it should when
you see these (the code) it should just become active, period; with no
effort on your part.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

I must tell in Acrobat the process to make a URL or Mailto: in Acrobat
up to 8 is the following:

Locate the word or name you want to link.
highlight it and change its color to the normal blue for links.
Now while highlighted in drawn elements create a Straight line and make
sure its colored the same blue now move and place under Link.
Now go to Link tool and create your URL or mailto: get out of That you
now have your hot link properly formatted and ready to go .
of course you spend about 10 minutes doing all of this.

Now multiple this by say three or 4 items on a page. And perhaps 5, 10,
20 pages.

Now take that same document created in word2007. and using the Windows
version of Acrobat The links pop to blue and are hot from time they are
typed. Now use the Acrobat Print Driver to create a PDF. Guess what they
are turned blue, and underlined, out of the box.

Mail and news program turn items into links when they are sent if they
are typed correctly. If you type http://, ftp://, or mailto: ; they
automatically turn blue. why can't the engineers at MacBu figure out how
that done and write that type code into Office Mac and it wouldn't have
to depend upon PC side of things.

 

[herojig]

phillip, thx for that but i dont understand most of what u say. r u saying this is a political issue? there is no way i am going to manually re-create hundreds of links (and that's just for one document). first off, I don't really know where they all are unless i go line by line comparing both documents. the TOCs alone with the docs i deal with are pages long and original authors have used cross-refs liberally, as they should. then there are indexes and the like as well. this is nuts! i think it's clear this is in MS's court (what's a macBU?). but if i read u, u are saying the code's not there, so i am just crying over spilt milk? Well, thx for any advice that i can use to get links working in PDFs (en masse) from mac word docs...
jigs

 

[CyberTaz]

There's no XPS support on the Mac but there is a PDF option in the Save
As... Unfortunately it won't give you much - if any - more of what you're
looking for than the PDF output provided by OS X.

Label it "political", "economics" or whatever but the fact is that inboard
PDF generation on the Mac isn't implemented as fully as it is on the PC.
IMHO, although I greatly respect him I take exception to how Michel worded
his reply. If you create the doc on a Mac then move the file to a PC &
generate the PDF using Acrobat - without ever editing it in PC Word - the
links will work. Conversely, if you create the doc with PC Word then move it
to a Mac - without ever editing it in Mac Word - Acrobat *won't* generate
the links.

I have no idea what the real source of the problem is, but how that
translates to "Word 2008...does not create hyperlinks" I don't understand -
especially since a Mac Word doc's links work fine in PC Word. It's just in
PDFs generated on the Mac that the links don't work, and Word doesn't
generate the PDFs.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[herojig]

oh, and I meant to say that I am not going to use two operating systems just to edit and produce a valid word file that will behave with Acrobat. I am ready to explore other options, but not sure there are any out there. Rtf? Meaning use another editor and rtf as an intermediary? Not sure what kinda nightmare that would be...just editing docx in mac and docx on PC causes other problems not related to pdf generation, but that's another post!

 

[John McGhie]

Naaahhh... It's just Phillip flogging a horse that died ten years ago

Word inserts hyperlinks just fine in 2008. Try it: Insert some hyperlinks
on a page and save it as a Web Page: the hyperlinks will be alive and well.

Now save the same document as PDF, and they're deleted. That's Adobe's
fault.

Adobe can't be bothered updating its import filter to import the Word .docx
format (or, I assume, the OpenOffice ODF format, since they treat Hyperlinks
exactly the same...)

Microsoft's part of this blame is the TOC generator in Mac Office. For
about ten years now, Microsoft has been "getting away with" shipping the
'old' TOC generator from Word 97, which was replaced by the TOC generator in
Word 2000.

The 'old' one does not generate hyperlinks, only cross-references.

The Word 2000 TOC generator generates both. Microsoft has been avoiding
porting the new version to the Mac, to save money.

Adobe has been getting away with blaming Microsoft for their feeble attempt
at Acrobat on the Mac ever since. And Adobe will continue to get away with
this until Microsoft fixes the TOC generator. Because many users can't
distinguish between "hyperlinks that do not transport to PDF" (Adobe's
Problem) and "a TOC generator that does not generate hyperlinks"
(Microsoft's problem).

Given that both companies charge several hundred dollars for their product,
you would think they might make them work, one day...

If you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat, it will attempt to "guess"
where the hyperlinks are, by looking at the text. Anything beginning
"http://..." will get a hyperlink. Of course, that doesn't work in a TOC,
because the hyperlinks are not visible in the printable text.

Cheers

phillip, thx for that but i dont understand most of what u say. r u saying
this is a political issue? there is no way i am going to manually re-create
hundreds of links (and that's just for one document). first off, I don't
really know where they all are unless i go line by line comparing both
documents. the TOCs alone with the docs i deal with are pages long and
original authors have used cross-refs liberally, as they should. then there
are indexes and the like as well. this is nuts! i think it's clear this is in
MS's court (what's a macBU?). but if i read u, u are saying the code's not
there, so i am just crying over spilt milk? Well, thx for any advice that i
can use to get links working in PDFs (en masse) from mac word docs...
jigs

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

Ummm.... "Yes", you are If you want it to work, that is ...

That's the only way you are going to be able to do what you want.

You need a version of Word 2000 or later for the PC to actually create a TOC
that contains hyperlinks. (Any 32-bit version of PC Word will work with the
"Compatibility Pack" free download from Microsoft that handles conversions
from .docx).

Then you need a copy of Adobe Acrobat for the PC to actually be able to READ
the hyperlinks. Or you can use their paid-for online service:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=328556

Anything else won't work. If you Google, you will see that thousands of
users have wasted thousands of hours trying to find a way around this

Cheers

oh, and I meant to say that I am not going to use two operating systems just
to edit and produce a valid word file that will behave with Acrobat. I am
ready to explore other options, but not sure there are any out there. Rtf?
Meaning use another editor and rtf as an intermediary? Not sure what kinda
nightmare that would be...just editing docx in mac and docx on PC causes other
problems not related to pdf generation, but that's another post!

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[herojig]

John, thx for that, so now it's down to a faulty TOC generator, which must be the code that generates ALL cross-references (list of tables, page refs, index, etc.). That's 95% of the links needed for me. I guess its a dead horse then. Cheers,
Jigs

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

MacBU = Mac Business Unit of Microsoft.

Yes it hard to under stand and it that complex of an Issue.

I am simply as several question and also giving the procedure need to
turn a URL say http:www.microsoft.com in to a properly formatted link
Acrobat.

even links in items such as TOC are somewhat complex in the Acrobat Mac
version while it is each to create link by double clicking on desired
word the choosing link to make a link, and creating desired link. The
fact is its a Manual process you don't necessarily need to change the
color if don't need to or create an underline. But you still have to
create all links manually in Acro 7.8.9.

And I am trying figure out whether its MS that Lazy or Acrobat. MS
people say its Adobe's problem , and Adobe people say its MS problem.

Going by MS past treatment of Mac Users I am suspecting it MS problem.
But I'm not really accusing anyone.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Office 2008 and 2004 do insert links.

The Issue I am talking about when those links are converted in to PDF
through the Acrobat print Driver. They do not transfer over. They are
dead as Doorknob. Then in Acrobat you have to recreate them. That's the
issue I am referring to. Not that MS doesn't create links in Office.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Adobe Support claim is that certain Hooks (whatever that means) is
missing in the Mac version of Office. And That that Mac version of
Acrobat has the same code for this built in to both the Mac and PC versions.
And if you read Mr McGee's comments. He somewhat verifies what Adobe is
saying.

This would be something That The MVP need to twist the MacBU developers
arms, legs, fingers and whatever else they can twist; to get this fixed.
If the code is already available why can't in be inserted into the
Office Mac problem.

 

[herojig]

"The Issue I am talking about when those links are converted in to PDF
through the Acrobat print Driver."

that's the issue alright! seems like a dead horse flog however. wish i'd know before... might have kept a real pc in the house...

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Phillip:

Let me see if I can say this 'gently'

ADOBE IS TELLING LIES!!

Word creates hyperlinks. The hyperlinks go in the document. Open a .docx
file in a browser and you will see the hyperlinks working.

The hyperlinks are in the file.

If you want to retrieve hyperlinks from a Word document, you can do so using
AppleScript or VBA. (Yes, there's a work-around that would let you dig
hyperlinks out of a Word 2008 document using Word 2004's VBA...)

So all the "hooks" they need are there.

But Adobe has chosen not to bring any bait, so it's not going to catch any
fish!

Yes, I agree, it's a lot cheaper for Adobe to try to blame Microsoft than it
is to spend a day or two coding to make this work. And yes, I agree, this
helps Adobe make Microsoft's products look bad, so they believe this will
sell more PDF software.

But in my mind, it's not very ethical behaviour

One thing that I wonder about is why you keep doing Adobe's mischief for
them on this one? The only place you will find the claim that Microsoft
somehow removed the hooks from its Word documents, is in the misinformation
that Adobe spreads.

I'm not sure why you keep repeating it in here? I mean, I would encourage
you to do that if I thought that Adobe was at least going to reward you by
presenting you with a free copy of their products But somehow, I
suspect you'll find an empty seat on a peak-hour bus a lot sooner than that
will happen

Cheers

Adobe Support claim is that certain Hooks (whatever that means) is
missing in the Mac version of Office. And That that Mac version of
Acrobat has the same code for this built in to both the Mac and PC versions.
And if you read Mr McGee's comments. He somewhat verifies what Adobe is
saying.

This would be something That The MVP need to twist the MacBU developers
arms, legs, fingers and whatever else they can twist; to get this fixed.
If the code is already available why can't in be inserted into the
Office Mac problem.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[herojig]

John, about ur last note in regards to whose fault it is. I suspect it's MS because of this reason: A toc created on the mac, when brought over to a PC, will not create valid PDF links either. Or, that could just be another problem. But regardless, the companies should work together to fix this. But I am not holding my breath, both of these companies are terrible at fixing things that mean the most. Cheers, Jigs