weblinks no longer distill into acrobat pdf's

[Bob]

This could be a Word issue or Acrobat Distiller, I suppose:

I used to be able to distill (print) to a .pdf document from Microsoft Word
and the links that were "active" in the Word document would be active in the
pdf. Now, they come across blue and underlined (as IF they were active) but
nothing happens when you point at them in Acrobat (If I select from
the Acrobat menu Advanced/Web Capture/View Web Links - it does not
recognize any of the distilled text as a link). I am using "Acrobat
5.0 compatible" in the distiller settings and the lost links happens whether I
select the "pdf maker" tool from word or go through the Adobe PDF printer
in the Printer selection dialog. Just to be sure my Acrobat was working OK, I
checked a copy of the same MSWord document that I had distilled 6 months
ago (with an earlier versions of everything) and my current version of
Acrobat sees and activates the distilled links just fine.

thanks for any direction or suggestions ... I must have a setting messed up
somewhere ... it must be the deadline I'm working under

Bob {using Word 2004 V11.0; Acrobat 6.0.2 on Mac OSX v10.3.4}

 

[Bob \(sorry to answer my own question\)]

Someone told me it couldn't be done on a Mac (but yes on Windows) ... that
was enough of a challenge to look further and I found a way in Acrobat:

In the Acrobat Menu: Advanced/Link/Create from URLs in Document =>
this worked just fine on my Mac (and my PC) and generated the correct
links. I don't know why it doesn't happen automatically, but this seems like
it works well enough for me.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

In the Acrobat Menu: Advanced/Link/Create from URLs in Document =>
this worked just fine on my Mac (and my PC) and generated the correct
links. I don't know why it doesn't happen automatically, but this seems like

it works well enough for me.

If the hyperlins appear with the regular syntax in the text (eg
http://www.apple.com/) then you can use acrobat to scan the PDF and activate
the links.


Corentin

 

[Robert R. Rahl]

Additional note on using regular hyperlink syntax: email addresses need to be
preceded by "mailto:" as in mailto:microsoft.public.mac.office.word. An email address
without "mailto:" is not activated by Acrobat's Create Links from URLs function. The
same is true for a URL which is not preceded by "http://".

This has caused me a fair amount of aggravation and time. In many documents it is
undesirable for esthetic reasons to have "mailto:" appear for each and every email
address but the alternative is to turn them into links one by one, which gets tedious
after awhile.

If anyone has come up with a trick to deal with this I will appreciate your sharing it.

RRR

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Someone told me it couldn't be done on a Mac (but yes on Windows) ... that
was enough of a challenge to look further and I found a way in Acrobat:

In the Acrobat Menu: Advanced/Link/Create from URLs in Document =>
this worked just fine on my Mac (and my PC) and generated the correct
links. I don't know why it doesn't happen automatically, but this seems like
it works well enough for me.

But does it work for links to headings and bookmarks in the document itself?
For example, if you have a generated a table of contents in the Word doc
where clicking on the page numbers takes you to the correct page, does that
transfer over to the PDF? I thought not. It does work in the Windows version
of Acrobat 6.0. The PDF can then be brought over to the Mac and works fine.
(This may partly depend on the fact that Word Windows 2000, 2002 and 2003
all have an \h switch for making real hyperlinks - from a click anywhere in
the TOC entry - in Table of Contents, whereas Word Mac 2001, X and 2004 do
not have the \h switch. Please send Feedback in the Help menu if you want
this in Word Mac: it absolutely depends on the number of people requesting
it, I have been told by MacBU.)

However, document-anchored hyperlinks entered manually in the Word doc also
work form a PDF made in Acrobat 6.0.2 Windows but not, I think, form Acrobat
Mac. Or does Acrobat Mac 6.0.2 accomplish this? I'm actually using Acrobat
Windows in Virtual PC precisely for this reason. It finally validates my
having got VPC. ;-)

BTW, to save people countless trouble I had: the Convert to PDF kept
quitting before creating a PDF, while trying to "create tags". I found that
if I went into "Change Conversion Settings" in the Adobe PDF menu in Word
Win, and unchecked the "Enable accessibility and reflow with Tagged PDF"
option, leaving "Add bookmarks" and "Add links" options in place. Within a
minute or two I had my PDF complete with hyperlinked TOC and other links. It
looked OK.

I transported it across state lines to the Mac part of my computer where by
default it appears as a Preview pdf file. (Since Acrobat Windows of course
does not give it a Mac file type, it won't have the Acrobat icon nor open in
Reader by default, but rather in Preview - default PDF and graphics viewer
in Mac OS X - which is as I want, since everyone here has Preview built in.)
That could easily be changed to open in Acrobat Reader if I wanted it to, by
doing a Get Info and "Opens With" Reader.

In Preview it looks beautiful (the fonts look better on the Mac , and
typeface is crisper, line spacing better too). All the hyperlinks work, page
preview comes for free on Preview as always, plus "Bookmarks" tab opens to a
permanent outline view of the table of contents in the left pane, as it did
on Windows, but with nicer layout.

It would be great if Acrobat Mac could do this, but I'll be quite surprised
if even 6.0.2 can do it. Can it? If not, I feel it justifies having VPC just
for this.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Duncan]

I've just downloaded Acrobat 7.0 for OSX. I use Office x and am new to
Acrobat. Has the issue of transferring Word bookmarks to PDF files
been resolved? If so I'd welcome some know-how.

On 8/15/04 10:42 PM, in article

[email protected], "Bob

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Duncan:

Hmmm.... To convert Word's bookmarks to PDF hyperlinks, you need to use
PDFMaker.dot.

Most of us delete PDFMaker.dot because it's toxic to day-to-day use of Word.
If you still have yours, and use it to make your PDFs, you can elect to
replicate the bookmarks. There's then no issue with the bookmarks: they
work just fine.

However, you then need a way to manage the fact that after use, you want to
remove PDF Maker from Word until next time. Otherwise Word may start very
slowly, refuse to start at all, or crash a lot.

Hope this helps

I've just downloaded Acrobat 7.0 for OSX. I use Office x and am new to
Acrobat. Has the issue of transferring Word bookmarks to PDF files
been resolved? If so I'd welcome some know-how.



[email protected], "Bob
... that

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John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
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