Maintain hyperlinks in PDF

[rik1603]

When using a PDF writer from an excel page the hyperlinks become inactive. Is there a way to fix this?

 

[UniMord]

Adobe Acrobat keeps the hyperlinks intact if they're entered as text. Meaning, if you'll enter in a cell: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com, the link will work, but if you use the function:
=HYPERLINK("http://www.rushlimbaugh.com", "Rush"),
it won't, because Acrobat doesn't actually start resolving worksheet functions when it prints, so it can't recognize it.

I don't know what happens if you use a different writer.

 

[rik1603]

Hi UniMord,

I think you have hit my problem dead on.

With what you have said in mind is there a way (in terms of a formula) which will turn an =HYPERLINK cell value into a plain text one which will be active when PDF'd?

 

[UniMord]

After fiddling around a little, I see that if the link looks like an address, it'll get interpreted as one, even if it's made with the HYPERLINK function. The problem is, when you use a "friendly name", that conceals the address, that both Acrobat and PDFMaker have no way of knowing it's a hyperlink, or what the address is either. If it's really important, you can hit F12 and save the sheet as Web Page (*.htm; *.html) or Single File Web Page (*.mht; *.mhtml), and then print that to Acrobat.

Otherwise, just type the friendly name in a cell next to the link, like this:
Rush Limbaugh: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com

 

[rik1603]

Thanks for looking into it UniMord.

Your solution is a good one and I eneded up using it a little. In my case the links are really long so I ended up just using a small font and displaying the full URL. Not idea but it works!

Looked into html pages too but had fortmat issues outside of IE and Firefox.

Thanks for all your help.

 

[UniMord]

I discovered a solution!

Select the entire page you want to print, copy, then go to Acrobat and use File/Create/PDF from Clipboard. This doesn't work if you print to Acrobat, only if you create it from within.

 

[rik1603]

I discovered a solution!

Select the entire page you want to print, copy, then go to Acrobat and use File/Create/PDF from Clipboard. This doesn't work if you print to Acrobat, only if you create it from within.

Ahhh.. that's a very good work around. Hadn't thought of that at all.

Ill give that a go!

Thanks for your help