PDF'able Word Intra-document hyperlinks?

November 25, 2005 9:18 AM

Intra-document hyperlinks (bookmarks) in MS Word Documents that can are preserved in PDF documents--Is this possible?

I create directory of information as a promotional device for a service I offer. The directory contains many dozens of phone numbers, grouped by county.

It would be great if I enhance my directory so one could jump from Page 1 to any one of the 11 following pages with a mouse click. Is this possible in Word? In a way that will survive distilling the document into a PDF? Or, if I convert the Word Document into an HTML Document (actually, I'd like to avoid this since much of the formating would be lost in HTML, me thinks...)?

posted by ParisParamus to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Actually, I think Word calls them cross-references. But the issue of whether they will survive distilling remains; and any work-around....
posted by ParisParamus at 9:38 AM on November 25, 2005

PDFMaker 6.0 will do it, according to this page.
posted by twiggy at 9:45 AM on November 25, 2005

I'm on Mac OS X, alas...
posted by ParisParamus at 10:19 AM on November 25, 2005

In the latest version of Word, you can make hyperlinks in word to a specific point in a document if you're using styles for your headings. For example, if you make the headers of each major section Heading 1, and then sub-sections Heading 2. Then you should highlight the phrase you want to turn into a hyperlink and hit Ctrl + K (on a PC, not sure what the command is or if this is even possible on a Mac). You have the choice of making a hyperlink to a file or URL, or within the document. Selecting "within the document" should give you a tree list of all of your headings. If you're saving to PDF right from Word, I know for a fact that these will still work. If you're making PDFs with distiller or some other option that's creating the PDF from the data sent to the printer, I don't think it will work.

Saving Word Documents as html does keep a lot of the formatting, FWIW. I don't know how that would be helpful for you, but you can do it. You can also save "cleaner" html by saving as "Web Page, Filtered" - but the html really isn't that clean.
posted by pazazygeek at 10:22 AM on November 25, 2005

If there aren't too many of those links, you can create them manually in Acrobat.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:41 AM on November 25, 2005

It depends, I think, on if you use a straight PDF printer (in essence creating a picture of the page and outputting it to PDF) or if it actually "extracts" the structure of the Word document and preserves the text/formatting.

I use Jaws PDF Creator to produce weekly newsletters. In the Jaws settings, it gives you the option to create PDF bookmarks from headings/cross references/hyperlinks, etc. from within the Word document.

I can create PDF files from Word in two ways. One option is to use macros from within Word, which preserves hyperlinks and text, and means that I can copy and paste text out of the final PDF. This, I think, is what you are looking for. It works really well, you just have to construct the Word document with some care in where you use style headings, for example.

The second option is to use the Jaws PDF printer installed to my printer folder. That option does not preserve the formatting and bookmarks/links, and I can't copy/paste text out of those documents either. It is basically just a picture of the page in PDF format.
posted by gemmy at 11:32 AM on November 25, 2005

Wow. This is all very helpful.

Right now, I don't have anything but the built-in-to OS X PDF distiller capabilities. Do I need the full version of Acrobat to use Jaws Creator? If not, it's a more cost-effective alternative.
posted by ParisParamus at 4:06 PM on November 25, 2005

Actually, I just tried the evaluation version of Jaws, and I couldn't get it to create a PDF that could be viewed...NEXT...
posted by ParisParamus at 4:29 PM on November 25, 2005