Strange colored underlined hyperlinks in pdf

[legrandm97442244]

If you download the following pdf [1], you will notice blue underlined hyperlinks in the references section (last page). Can these links be removed together with the light blue underlines? If yes, how? If not, why?

Also, the pdf contains other hyperlinks for bibliographics references (like [46]) or equation numbers (like (9)) in plain blue. Can this plain blue be tranfor;ed into plain black? If yes, how?

[1] A new two-noded curved beam finite element formulation based on exact solution (PDF Download Availab...

[try67]

Might be possible with the Convert Colors colors, but the best is to contact the authors of the file and ask them to change it for you in the source file and then create a new PDF.

[legrandm97442244]

well, the blue underlines are created by the website "ResearchGate" storing the pdf. So my question still remains. There might be a way to remove the blue lines directly with Acrobat DC.

[try67]

Only by manually editing each and every one of them.

On Mar 28, 2017 2:41 AM, "legrandm97442244" <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[Test Screen Name]

The lines are not part of the hyperlinks in PDF terms. Hyperlinks are just zones of the page. So the lines, which are put there by the creating process, are just graphics which happen to be in the vicinity of a link. Acrobat editing is not made for doing this at all, still less automating it.

[Test Screen Name]

By the way, it is not correct to say these lines are created by the ResearchGate web site. The ResearchGates web site stores the PDF, it does not create it. It was created months ago, perhaps by people, or different apps, in the ResearchGate organisation, using their own publishing software which they call "Springer". Apparently.

[legrandm97442244]

No, the blue underlines are created by ResearchGate for sure (I do not know how exactly). Essentially, authors upload their pdf files, then ResearchGate has a look at its database to see which cited bibliographic references are already available in the database, and then create links. What I find strange is that these links do not seem to be removable easily in Acrobat Pro.

[Karl Heinz Kremer · Accepted solution]

It does not matter which application created these underlines, but you may want to think twice before trying to argue with TSN

What's important is that the underlines are graphics content that is independent of the link, so even when you remove the link, that line remains in the PDF file. There are ways to identify these elements, and then remove them, but that would require a custom Preflight fixup, in which you describe exactly what you want to remove (e.g. in your case "is line", RGB value of [0.333, 0.694, 0.961], line with of 1.0pt). You can then run this fixup, and it will remove all lines that look like your blue underline. I just did a quick check, and it identified 68 instances of such lines in your document.

Keep in mind that this will also remove any blue line that matches that description, but is not a line under a link.

[Test Screen Name]

It may be created by the ResearchGate organization. But it is not dynamically created by the web site, and almost certainly not created on the web site. Sorry, probably sounds like I'm splitting hairs, but this sort of distinction is often important.

Nothing strange about Acrobat Pro's difficulties. It's barely an editor at all, still less an editor for graphics. And these are certainly graphics, not underlines somehow connected to the text or link, even though that is the purpose of them.

[legrandm97442244]

Thank you for your answer. This is what I am looking for. Still, could you please be more precise/detailed concerning the custom Preflight fixup? What are the steps to perform this? Thank you