Affinity Designer is not exporting pdf with hyperlinks

[fts]

I've created an iBook that afterwards needed to be converted to a pdf file that contains a lot of hyperlinks.

Due to its final size (400mb) and the need to make some changes in its design, I used Affinity Designer (to make that changes and export it with different settings to make it smaller). Although the "include hyperlinks" option is selected in the pdf exportation window, when I open the exported pdf file there's no hyperlinks whatsoever.

Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong? Or can it be because it's an original pdf file from iBooks Author?

Did it happen to someone else?

 

Thank you!

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @fts.

As far as I know, hyperlinking is a Publisher function, not a Designer function. Only Publisher, for example, has the Hyperlinks studio panel, and the Text > Interactive > Insert Hyperlink menu actions.

It is possible that the option to include them in a PDF is only in Designer's export options because Designer can open Publisher files that might have hyperlinks in them.

[fts]

Thank you Walt.

I hope I understood your answer, and I'm sorry if I wasn't too clear with my question.

What I meant is that the pdf file already has hyperlinks when opened in Designer. And it's when I export it that it loses them - even though the pdf exporting window has an option to include them. I don't remember that option being there before, so it might be due to Publisher, as you say.

But I think that raises another question: if a file when opened in Designer has hyperlinks, how come it loses them when exporting, even with that option selected?

 

Thank you for your attention!

 

P.S.: I already found another way to achieve what I intended with the original pdf design and size.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, fts said:

What I meant is that the pdf file already has hyperlinks when opened in Designer.

I'm curious how you know that. You can't really trust the highlighting to show that a hyperlink is there, and Designer doesn't have the Hyperlinks studio panel that would let you look

However, I was able to do a test just now, and even in Publisher, when a PDF is opened, any hyperlinks it contains are not recognized and retained. I have not checked yet to see if this has been reported as a bug.

[Fritz_H]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm curious how you know that. You can't really trust the highlighting to show that a hyperlink is there, and Designer doesn't have the Hyperlinks studio panel that would let you look

??
How about opening/viewing the file in a PDF-Viewer?

(the URL is not identical to the displayed text => the link is not dynamically generated by the PDF-Viewer...)

Depending on the PDF-software you are using, some kind of "are u sure?" -popup message will be shown when clicking the hyperlink.

kind regards
Fritz

 

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Fritz_H said:

How about opening/viewing the file in a PDF-Viewer?

I didn't ask how @fts knew the PDF had links. That's easy.

Their statement was that it had hyperlinks when opened in Designer. You can only tell that the opened file, in Designer, has hyperlinks if you can examine them in Designer.

[Fritz_H]

fts wrote:

Quote

What I meant is that the pdf file already has hyperlinks when opened in Designer. 

to me that means that the PDF already contained hyperlinks as fts opened the file in Designer (= he/she did not want to add hyperlinks in Designer.)

But maybe that´s a misunderstanding on my side due to a certain language gap (?)...

kind regards
Fritz

[MikeW]

PDF hyperlinks do not survive coming into Affinity applications and so do not, cannot, get exported into a PDF.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

PDF hyperlinks do not survive coming into Affinity applications and so do not, cannot, get exported into a PDF.

Has that been posted as a bug or feature request, that you know of, Mike?

[MikeW]

I dunno, Walt.

I doubt it's possible. Hyperlinks in a pdf are not actually text attributes. They exist as rectangles placed on top of the text.

I didn't try opening a pdf in my Xara application, but if hyperlinks survive in it I would be surprised. 

Hyperlinks in a placed pdf in ID or QXP also do not survive in a subsequent pdf.

I also didn't try opening a pdf in Word, which can recognize URLs and automatically create hyperlinks if they are typed in. But whether that applies to a pdf that is converted upon opening is something I don't know. 

[MikeW]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Has that been posted as a bug or feature request, that you know of, Mike?

Ok. Someone might as well make a feature request...

I opened a PDF that contains hyperlinks in Word and the hyperlinks survived.

Then I tried using Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and here too the hyperlinked survived:

And of course the hyperlinks were exported to pdf. But I think it is worth noting that both applications are making the pdf into an editable document and not placing in the strict sense.

Also, it is known that APub imports a Word file that contains hyperlinks but I thought I should state that here.

[fts]

12 hours ago, Fritz_H said:

fts wrote:

to me that means that the PDF already contained hyperlinks as fts opened the file in Designer (= he/she did not want to add hyperlinks in Designer.)

But maybe that´s a misunderstanding on my side due to a certain language gap (?)...

kind regards
Fritz

Fritz_H

That's exactly what I meant.

 

As I say in my first thread, I exported the pdf file from iBooks Author. The pdf has a lot of hyperlinks. When I open it in Designer and export it, it loses them!

 

 

 

11 hours ago, MikeW said:

PDF hyperlinks do not survive coming into Affinity applications and so do not, cannot, get exported into a PDF.

MikeW

I don't know if it applies to all Affinity applications, but at least for Designer your explanation makes sense to me.

 

 

Thank you all for your interest in my question. As I said, I found another solution to achieve what I wanted.

I hope this problem can be solved. If not for me, for others that may have their work simplified when working with Affinity applications!

 

Kind regards to you all

Filipa

 

[Fritz_H]

@fts

Hi Filipa,
Thanks for your answer.

The conclusion: Designer and even Publisher fail at handling hyperlinks:
- adding a hyperlink manually is a pain
- copy-paste of styled text from a Webbrowser is (a bit depending on the Browser..) very poor: formatting lost, hyperlinks lost
pasting the same content to MS Word works fine (formatting, hyperlinks..) ; copying the Word-Result into Publisher works better ..but hyperlinks are still lost.

I wonder if Affinity does know that lots of DTP is done for electronic documents (PDFs) these days.

kind regards
Fritz

[quarkdoll]

Yes, I hope this gets implemented in Publisher and Designer; it would make my life better.