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.