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fgrextsg
fgrextsg
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Word to PDF does not keep hyperlinks in Table of Contents ?

Dec 5, 2011 3:28 AM

I have used my free trial of Adobe CreatePDF before purchasing the annual subscription.

 

I was surprised to see that the PDF document did not keep the clickable hyperlinks that Word uses in a Table of Contents. As this is the exact same behaviour as the "Save as PDF ..." option that I have natively available on my computer I don't see the point of paying a subscription to the service. Or am I doing something wrong?

 

 

MAC OS X Lion (10.7.2)

Office for Mac 2011

150-page .doc document with Section, Chapter, and various Heading Styles defined

WORD automatically-built Table of Contents

In the WORD document, the page numbers in the Table of Contents are hyperlinks to the concerned page

Convert WORD to PDF using "Save as PDF ..." option in the "Print..." dialog box

       ====> Table of Contents hyperlinks are not preserved (the page numbers are no longer clickable)

Convert WORD to PDF using Adobe CreatePDF

       ====> Table of Contents hyperlinks are not preserved (the page numbers are no longer clickable)

 

Am I missing something or is this the way it is intended (not) to work?

 

 

P.S.: I know that, on the MAC, I can use Preview to manipulate the PDF document I obtain through "Print..." > "Save as PDF...". One of the things I can do is to select the page numbers in the Table of Contents and add a 'link' to each. But this is a VERY cumbersome process. Actually, I have to create a link for each page number, one at a time, on a table of contents that may consist of in excess of 50 entries. As I have a collection of 50-odd documents and am on a schedule of distributing new versions every two weeks or so, this procedure is completely unusable. Hence my search for a (paid) service that converts my documents while preserving the hyperlinks of the Word-created Table of Contents. Either I am doing something wrong or such service does simply not exist ...

19220 Views   4 Replies   Latest reply: gcozzens1, Nov 17, 2012 7:21 PM
 
Replies
  • LoriAUC
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    1. LoriAUC,
    Dec 5, 2011 7:24 AM   in reply to fgrextsg
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    Have you tried making sure that your TOC entries are actually hyperlinked as detailed in the following blog post Ensuring that Word TOCs create Hyperlinks in Acrobat?

     
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  • David Kastendick
    3,110 posts
    Apr 7, 2010
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    2. David Kastendick,
    Dec 5, 2011 1:57 PM   in reply to fgrextsg
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    Good day fgrexsg,

     

    You are correct in that the workflow you described will not produce links in the resulting PDF files.  The steps that Lori outlined work great if you're working on Office for Windows in terms of getting the links to work when converting using the CreatePDF service. 

     

    In order to make this work on the Mac, you'll have to take a few extra steps within Office first.

     

    You're going to have to repeat this step for each item in your TOC.  While this will be time-consuming for a 150-page document, it will work.

    1. Within your TOC, highlight the entire entry listing (e.g. Topic 1.........3)
    2. Once the entire line is highlighted, choose Insert > Hyperlink
    3. Click 'Document' to select a location within the current document.
    4. Under the 'Anchor' option, either type in the Heading/Sub-heading (must be exact) of the page you want the hyperlink to attach to or click 'Locate' and find the proper Heading/Sub-heading within the structure.

     

    As I said, this will probably be time-consuming on such a large document, but it will work. 

     

    Unfortunately Office for Mac just simply isn't as full-featured as its Windows counterpart.

     

    Please let me know if you have any questions.

     

    Kind regards,

    David

    Acrobat Community Manager

    Adobe Systems

     
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  • fgrextsg
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    3. fgrextsg,
    Dec 5, 2011 2:07 PM   in reply to LoriAUC
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    Thanks for the suggestion but rather irrelevant. The blog refers to Word for Windows; Word for Mac, especially Word 2011, does not have the functions described and illustrated in the blog.

     

    This said, there may be a way to achieve what the blog describes in Word 2011 for Mac. A preliminary quick test revealed however that hyperlinks are still not preserved after conversion to PDF. And, at any rate, what that solution suggests is to eliminate page numbers altogether from the TOC, keeping only the titles and have hyperlinks behind the titles. That is unfortunately not what I need : I need a TOC with page numbers (for printed copies of the document) and clickable hyperlinks behind the page numbers (for users who read the document on their computers, iPads, eReaders, and so on).

     

    Again, thanks for the suggestion.

     
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  • gcozzens1
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    4. gcozzens1,
    Nov 17, 2012 7:21 PM   in reply to fgrextsg
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    This of course makes Adobe Acrobat for Mac USELESS. Funny I just bought Acrobat XI for Mac - I guess I should have purchased the cheap PDF tool at Staples instead. I just spent 4 days working on links in a document and now this says I need to redo them in Acrobat? Unbelievable.

     
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