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Old 03-14-2019, 05:48 PM
rashidclark rashidclark is offline Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2019
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Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links?
 
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Default Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links?

New user of MS Word here, sorry for the newbie question.





My document makes frequent use of header cross-references. I would like these to behave as links when exported to PDF format, so that clicking the reference will scroll the pdf to the page containing that header. However, currently when I export a pdf the cross-references do not behave as links.


I have tried the advice on this page of selecting the export option of "Minimize size", and deselecting the "PDF/A compliant" option. Which didn't help.
I've looked through the options on "File -> Print -> Printer -> Microsoft Print to PDF" as well, but didn't find anything that looked like it would help.
I do have the free version of Acrobat Reader installed. However there aren't any Acrobat plug-ins listed in "options -> add-ins -> COM add-ins".

Would this feature require installing the commercial version of Acrobat? I'd rather not have to pay a monthly subscription just to have links.



Thank you for any help.
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Old 03-14-2019, 07:57 PM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is online now Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2016
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Try Save As and choose pdf.
Look at the options there.
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Old 03-14-2019, 08:23 PM
rashidclark rashidclark is offline Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2019
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Thank you.

"Save as" gave the same options as "Export". And thus resulted in a pdf without linked cross-references.
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Old 03-15-2019, 06:56 AM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is online now Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2016
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Try changing your internal cross-references (ref fields) to hyperlinks (a different field). The difference is that the displayed text will not update automatically. You will have the link.
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Old 03-15-2019, 07:57 AM
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Stefan Blom Stefan Blom is offline Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2016
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As Charles said, if the cross-references are hyperlinked in the Word document, they would also be hyperlinked in the resulting PDF.
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Old 03-15-2019, 08:01 PM
rashidclark rashidclark is offline Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2019
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Thank you Charles.

That's unfortunate that we can't have the best of both worlds (the "updating" capability of a cross-reference with the pdf navigation of a hyperlink.) This is a feature which is available in Open Office, which I'm migrating from.

Alas.
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Old 03-16-2019, 06:11 AM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is online now Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2016
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rashidclark View Post
Thank you Charles.

That's unfortunate that we can't have the best of both worlds (the "updating" capability of a cross-reference with the pdf navigation of a hyperlink.) This is a feature which is available in Open Office, which I'm migrating from.

Alas.
I was accepting your statement that you could not have a hyperlink in the pdf.

I just tried it in Word 2019 (365) and had no trouble. i also did it by creating a hyperlink and then editing the field to use a cross-reference for the display text in the field. Save as PDF. Both methods are hyperlinks in the PDF, as shown by the pointing hand cursor.
The top one was a simple cross-reference. The second is a Hyperlink field with a cross-reference used as the text. Here are the fields.

Moving from a different word processing program is always a pain. I strongly urge you to review the short series of tutorials that starts here:
Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word - from Shauna Kelly
It will save you a lot of frustration although it would not have addressed this question.
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Old 03-16-2019, 06:48 AM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is online now Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2016
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If you want them to appear like hyperlinks, you can do that, but you have to apply the formatting directly. Word suppresses the blue underline Hyperlink character style on cross-references. They are hyperlinks, nevertheless.

A character style (not Hyperlink) can be created and used to apply formatting.
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Old 03-16-2019, 10:20 AM
rashidclark rashidclark is offline Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2019
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Thank you for the clarification, you have been very helpful and it is much appreciated. I'll make sure to check out those introductory documents.


I had actually tried something similar to your solution yesterday, without success. Going through all the steps again just now, it turns out that my problem was that when creating the cross-reference, I had the "Insert as hyperlink" box checked. When instead keeping that unchecked, everything works fine.


EDIT: Now that I've sat down with the document again, I'm finding the reverse to be the case: The "Insert as hyperlink" box needs to be checked. Quite puzzling.

Last edited by rashidclark; 03-16-2019 at 01:54 PM.
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Old 03-16-2019, 04:40 PM
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Stefan Blom Stefan Blom is offline Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Windows 10 Can a PDF export of Cross-references be treated as links? Office 2016
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If it is the appearance of a hyperlink you are after, then you will have to add the \* CHARFORMAT switch to each REF field and then apply the desired format to the field itself. (Without the switch, formatting may be lost as you update the fields.) See http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/Forma...htm#FormatFont.

As you have found, you'll need the "Insert as hyperlink" option to be checked for Word to create a cross-reference as a hyperlink. The setting applies only to the individual reference that you are inserting (but the option is enabled by default).
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