Links Lost on Conversion to PDF

[Rich_Lewis]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Attempting to convert Word (2008) documents to PDFs but most links are not preserved in the resulting PDF (using Acrobat Pro 9.0.0). Links that do not show up in the PDF include hyperlinks to websites from non-URL display text, and links to bookmarks within the document.

Tried File>Save As...>PDF and File>Print...>Save As PDF... with the same disappointing results. Tried to save the same Word file as a PDF from a Windows machine and everything displays and works as expected in Acrobat, however all links have ugly boxes around them in Mac OSX Preview. Is there a fix that will allow me to preserve hyperlinks when saving from Mac Word 2008?

Any help appreciated.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Attempting to convert Word (2008) documents to PDFs but most links are
not preserved in the resulting PDF (using Acrobat Pro 9.0.0). Links
that do not show up in the PDF include hyperlinks to websites from
non-URL display text, and links to bookmarks within the document.

Acrobat for Mac doesn't support preserving the links :-\

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Sorry, I used the wrong shortcut and sent my message before I was done
writing :-\

Attempting to convert Word (2008) documents to PDFs but most links are
not preserved in the resulting PDF (using Acrobat Pro 9.0.0). Links
that do not show up in the PDF include hyperlinks to websites from
non-URL display text, and links to bookmarks within the document.

Acrobat for Mac doesn't support preserving any of these links unfortunately.

Tried File>Save As...>PDF and File>Print...>Save As PDF... with the
same disappointing results.

Yeah, and Print > Save as PDF does the same.
In Acrobat, I scan the resulting file to reactivate the links that are
in full text.
Not perfect, but at least it gets some of the job done.


There is unfortunately no decent way to get this automatically done in MacOS X.

          Corentin

 

[Rich_Lewis]

Have read varying reports/opinions, split about 50/50, placing the blame for this ridiculous feature omission on Microsoft or Adobe. Seems each company blames the other. Either way, the end user loses. Wish both companies would step up and work together to get it right.

I have now tried various online Word>PDF converters with mixed results. Each have their strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, none are perfect.

Have also heard that OpenOffice or NeoOffice may accommodate this conversion. Can anyone confirm this? At my company, installing new software is a major ordeal filled with red tape (even freeware). So, I want to make sure it works before making a formal request.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Have also heard that OpenOffice or NeoOffice may accommodate this
conversion. Can anyone confirm this? At my company, installing new
software is a major ordeal filled with red tape (even freeware). So, I
want to make sure it works before making a formal request.

I've never tried doing so through either,

Corentin

 

[Delphinus]

I have run a test and confirmed the observations previously mentioned:

- Converting from Microsoft Word for Mac to PDF only preserves links where the link address is visible; all other links are lost. Interestingly, the broken links still 'appear' as links in the PDF document, but the link doesn't work.

- The problem is not affected by how one creates the PDF, whether via printing in OS X to PDF, converting from within Adobe Acrobat, or saving as a PDF from within Word.

- Running a test with Apple's TextEdit and with NeoOffice, all links are preserved. However OpenOffice has the same problem as Microsoft Word.

I've posted a simple illustration:
- original Word (zipped): http://people.trentu.ca/rloney/files/hyperlink_test_word-to-PDF.zip
- resulting PDF: http://people.trentu.ca/rloney/files/hyperlink_test_word-to-PDF.pdf

It is possible to re-introduce the links using Acrobat, but this is time consuming and should be unnecessary.

My conclusion from this is that this is a Word problem, not Apple or Adobe. Somehow the 'buried' links are not carried through to active links in the resulting PDF. Hopefully this bug will be repaired shortly (hopefully someone from Microsoft will see this).

Thank you.
Rob

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

(hopefully someone from Microsoft will see this).

Don't count on it. Instead, use the Send Feedback command in the Help
menu in Word itself to make sure you can make them well aware of the
problem.

Corentin

 

[Rich_Lewis]

Thank you for the replies and testing to confirm the problem. I had hoped that I was missing something but it appears so far that there is no practical solution. I am aware that links can be added directly in Acrobat but that is quite cumbersome with a large frequently-updated document since manual linking has to be redone after each revision. Programs like TextEdit may preserve the links but do not render formatting from Word accurately. I would appreciate hearing any additional thoughts on possible solutions. Microsoft really needs to fix this.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Thank you for the replies and testing to confirm the problem. I had
hoped that I was missing something but it appears so far that there is
no practical solution. I am aware that links can be added directly in
Acrobat but that is quite cumbersome with a large frequently-updated
document since manual linking has to be redone after each revision.
Programs like TextEdit may preserve the links but do not render
formatting from Word accurately. I would appreciate hearing any
additional thoughts on possible solutions. Microsoft really needs to
fix this.

I agree that a solution is badly needed. Not sure MS needs to "fix" it
since all they do is provide a way to convert the file through the
System services (Print to PDF). It would sure be nice if they could
provide a full support for links and structures while exporting to PDF
and I encourage you to let them know you'd like it to through the Send
Feedback command.

Adobe is at fault here as far as I am concerned. They make us pay good
money for a crippled version of Acrobat that has only a subset of
what's available on the WIndows version. I hope future versions of
Acrobat will provide these much needed functions.

In the meanwhile, I happen to have a license for Acrobat for Windows
(and Windows, Office, VMWare...) so when I need to do this, I launch
VMWare and perform the conversion in Windows :-\
Costly and resource intensive option :-<

          Corentin

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Rich;

Just a thought regarding...

Microsoft really needs to fix this.

When you take into consideration that the hyperlink mechanism in Mac Word is
*identical* to the mechanism in Win Word & that Acrobat on the PC does as
you expect but Acrobat for Mac doesn't, exactly how is Microsoft supposed to
"fix this"?

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

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Comment tell that to folks at Adobe.
Adobe (not users on the forums) will swear up and down sideways and
every other manner That MS doesn't provide the Hooks (whatever that is)
to make it work on a Mac.

What it amounts to, is they don't have decent programmers, have decent
programmers but can't figure out the problem, or they just don't give a
hoot for adding it into Mac version. I tend to believe three is the
most likely choice, and they use this excuse as a smoke screen.

Just like PDF from Word?excel Documents That have section breaks cause
a Pdf to be split up. A problem they have had since Acrobat 3 at least
and Office 4.2 for Mac. They make the excuse it Apple's Problem However,
OS X's print mechanism and display mechanism is Adobe PDF Based. But the
same was based on C++ or Objective C in OS (9.2.2 and lower) Not likely
to have the same problem on two different type systems.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Phillip:

Comment tell that to folks at Adobe.
Adobe (not users on the forums) will swear up and down sideways and
every other manner That MS doesn't provide the Hooks (whatever that is)
to make it work on a Mac.

Ask them what they mean by that Like: Specifically: what do they want?
As Bob says, the Word file format is bit-for-bit the same as on the PC
platform, and they do it there, so why not here?

What it amounts to, is they don't have decent programmers, have decent
programmers but can't figure out the problem, or they just don't give a
hoot for adding it into Mac version. I tend to believe three is the
most likely choice, and they use this excuse as a smoke screen.

Yes. So do I. If you look in a .docx file, you will see than these links
are not exactly "hidden". Either they know how to read XML -- or they
don't. If they don't, Microsoft would be happy to sell them a plug-in to do
that for them, just like the plug-in they provide to Apple so Spotlight can
read .docx

Cheers

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Rob,

- Converting from Microsoft Word for Mac to PDF only preserves links
where the link address is visible; all other links are lost.
Interestingly, the broken links still 'appear' as links in the PDF
document, but the link doesn't work.

Keep in mind that those non-masked URLs, starting with <http://>, are
not converted into hyperlinks and preserved in the resulting PDF file;
Adobe Reader has a built-in URL detection mechanism that automatically
converts text strings starting with <http://> into active hyperlinks. In
other words, links simply aren't preserved in the PDF output, no matter
what they look like.

- Running a test with Apple's TextEdit and with NeoOffice, all links are
preserved. However OpenOffice has the same problem as Microsoft Word.

Hmm, I'm surprised about OpenOffice.org, as the result should be exactly
the same as with NeoOffice. By the way, if you are also an iWork user,
you might find it interesting to know that PDFs created by Pages also
preserve hyperlinks.