Create PDF with internal hyperlinks

Question

I have an Excel workbook with an index page containing a series of images, that are each hyperlinked to different worksheets. Can anybody suggest how I can publish this to PDF so that the hyperlinks work in the PDF? When I publish or use PDF Factory, the hyperlinks are not preserved (and bookmarks aren't created for that matter either).

I would prefer to do this with inbuilt functionality or free tools, though any suggestions welcome.

Also, it doesn't necessarily have to be with Excel. Publishing from powerpoint would be almost as good, and failing that, any easy solution which allows me to create a PDF containing clickable images that takes one to internal bookmarks might also be a workaround.

Answer 1

PDF hyperlinks need to be defined/created with the PDF authoring tool. Excel doesn't know anything about PDFs, so its hyperlinks don't necessarily mean anything in PDF format unless your authoring tool can both read the Excel links and translate them into the PDF it authors. It sounds like pdfFactory doesn't do this on its own. Perhaps pdfFactory Pro would grant you the feature set necessary to achieve this.

Adobe Acrobat is the application that works with the PDF format most natively, and can definitely do this, but it is pricey. There may be alternative 3rd party software that can also do links; you may be able to take your PDF without links and use some software like that to add them later.

This list of PDF software may be helpful.

Answer 2

Only hyperlinks in Excel(2007) that link to external url work in the conversion to PDF even with Adobe Writer. Internal document reference link do not translate in PDF because the reference is lost in the save as.

Answer 3

PDF Factory pro just acts like a printer. it takes a 'picture' of your document, and makes it into a PDF.

You will need to use software that actually creates a PDF without a printer driver, such as PDF Studio, Bluebeam, Nitro, Adobe, or several other tools.

Answer 4

I've worked out that saving as PDF from Word will do this...i.e. internal hyperlinks are migrated to the PDF. However Excel and Powerpoint don't seem to do it.

According to the answer I'll upvote, Excel will export external hyperlinks, not internal.

Answer 5

I found that if I save the document as a web page, and then open it via Adobe Acrobat pro, it maintains the hyperlinks (downside is that it stuffs up the formatting).

Answer 6

Just use Adobe PDF, it works perfectly in there. But make sure the links are linked to defined names, not cells.