Hyperlinks in Body of Doc Die when Saved As PDF

Ok, I tried setting to no compression with an older version of this document that still had the Word art in it, and yes, it got rid of the black boxes, but now the text entered on these shapes does not show.

I am still at a complete loss about the hyperlinks.  I even reconstructed the document in Publisher 2007 ... when I make a PDF,  none of the body links work, but the footer links do, just like in Word 2010.

ADDENDUM:  I ended up having to recreate the document in LibreOffice.  It does not look as nice, but the links work.

What happens when you try to save the document in different format other than pdf format?

Try saving the document in microsoft xps or in .htm format and check if the links are working.

If the links work fine on other formats, try updating the adobe reader on the computer and check if it helps

Hi Surya,

I am using Reader 9.3.  It is the newest.  I am a documentation professional with over 25 years of experience, so I'm pretty used to making PDFs from Word and other apps.  ;o)

XPS looks lovely and the links work, but only Acrobat and CutePDF will make a PDF that is readable from this format.  PrimoPDF made a PDF in which the layout and graphics looked right, but the text was rendered in a mixture of weird fonts, looked like what you get when you print out a graphic file in text format (I've never actually seen a Windows box do that before...I've always seen that particular behavior on a Mac).  All of the PDFs had the same working footer links and dead body links.  BTW, clicking the Acrobat 9 icon inside of IE resulted in an error message that said Acrobat did not recognize the file type as a web page.  But when I opened Acrobat separately and dragged in the file without IE open, it converted just fine.  Unfortunately, the body links were still dead.

HTML destroyed the formatting, but the links worked in the HTML and in the PDF.  Unfortunately, the PDF was not usable due to the trashed formatting.

RTF also looks perfect and the links work inside Word, and the PDFs come out looking nice, but with the exact same dead body links.

For grins, I opened up a brand new document and applied no custom styles, no graphics, and no header or footer.  Just a vanilla plain, straight out of Word default settings document.  I added links to my web site and to CNN, saved, and made a PDF.  The PDF comes out with the same malformed links as occurred in the documentation suite I've been struggling with over the past week.

I then made a version with a simple footer, using the first selection available from the list of footers, and added a link to Microsoft.  When I made the PDF, *NONE* of the hyperlinks worked.

BTW, to make the links, I highlighted the text and typed Ctrl+K.  I set the Target Frame to New Window and selected the check box to set as default for all links.

This is what the malformed links look like when hovered over in the PDF...note that the cursor does not turn into a hand.

As you can see, that is completely abnormal.  A normal link is just the URL and the cursor turns into a hand.

Then I realized that in the documentation suite I've been working on, the footer link is one that Word generates automatically when you type in a full URL.  So I made another version of the plain test document with two types of footers - one with the hyperlink made via Ctrl+K and one made by typing out the URL and letting Word make the link.  In the resulting PDF, the hyperlink in the footer made with Ctrl+K was completely dead, and the one made with the whole URL and letting Word create the hyperlink worked.  So I added an automatically created hyperlink to the body, and guess what...the automatically made version worked!

I would be happy to send you a copy of this file and the PDF so you can verify it for yourself.

I regenerated one of my project files, and the links were still dead.  I then unchecked the "bitmap text" checkbox and regenerated the PDF.  Still nothing.  I reapplied styles to remove custom formatting of the hyperlinks (so they would match the color of the surrounding text...and the links then worked.

So that means there are the following BUGS concerning handoff of hyperlinks to PDF:

• handoff of hyperlinks (plain formatted or not, I tested) to PDF/A format
• handoff of hyperlinks made by Ctrl+K in the footer (plain formatted or not)
• handoff of hyperlinks that are applied to text with ANY styles or colors applied.

I mentioned that I am a documentation professional.  It really looks bad to have generic blue hyperlinks in an otherwise polished document.  I am also concerned about the inability to write an ISO compliant file:  that may be an issue to some clients.

Microsoft also needs to test all of the built-in styles for headers and footers, as well as all of the colors and styles that can be applied to text for compatibility with saving to PDF, as they are not all working correctly.  Even with setting documents to "no compression" some of the footer styles with page numbers don't PDF correctly.  I did not test them all, but at least 2 footer styles convert to PDF with an ugly black box on them.  Every feature packaged in Word should come out correctly when saved to PDF.  If it can't, it should be removed or otherwise labeled as not for use in documents that will be made into PDFs.

Often Acrobat's default installation setup configures it to remove hyperlinks when converting from Word.  To correct this, open Adobe Acrobat and

1. On the toolbar, click Edit and select Preferences from the drop down
2. In the Categories column select Convert to PDF
3. In the Converting to PDF column select Microsoft Office Word
4. Click the Edit Settings button
5. Make sure the Add Links to Adobe PDF File check box is selected

If that check box is already selected, I don't know what your problem is

Yes, this is an old question, but it's still relevant. One answer, which works very effectively for Word's built-in PDFing, is to:

1. Click File > Save As
2. Set Save as Type > PDF
3. Click Options > PDF Options > turn on ISO 19005-1 compliant (PDF/A)
4. OK, Save

(Instructions from Word 2010 (Windows), but should be quite similar in current versions)

Upsides:

• It works every time to preserve hyperlinks
• It's native to Word - no extra software required, and it'll work on anyone's computer who's using Word (this can be really handy in corporate environments)

Downside: It can generate larger files compared to, say, Nitro PDF. My test two-page document had embedded fonts, one extra colour, and a few paragraph borders. 

• Word: 3537 Kb
• PDFed by Nitro: 96 Kb
• PDFed by Word: 356 Kb

Yes, those are small numbers in 2017, and I haven't tested whether those ratios actually mean much, but just do a moment of testing in case you end up needing to PDF a large file. Not all your recipients are on desktop computers with unlimited bandwidth. :-)

Hope this helps!

@virge456, what does/doesn't happen - what is the mode of failure, and when/where does it fail?

• What are the exact steps you're using to create the link in Word?
• Does the link open as expected in Word?
• What happens when you XPS it?
• What PDF reader are you using?
• Do you get any different results using a different PDF reader?

What do you get when you hover over what should be a link?

• No response at all, as if it were just text?
• A hint that it may be a link (like hovertext, or it gives you the finger), but nothing happens when you click?

• A hint that it may be a link (like hovertext, or it gives you the finger), and it appears to have responded to the click, but the browser doesn't open? (Marginally different from the above question.)
• A clickable link that opens a browser but the destination fails to load?

BTW the solution that worked for me (above) is purely within Word and using Word's PDF conversion. (My preference is to use as few applications as possible.) I am not familiar enough with the deep details of how other applications may make the conversion; you may have better luck using a third-party app.