Affinity Publisher Removes all Hyperlinks in PDF's

[Dooceswild]

Hello, I've tried Affinity Publisher on Windows, Mac, and iPad. The same thing happens for all three. I have a PDF file with many hyperlinks in it. When I open it, these are not retained. I can't find them anywhere.

I am able to create new ones, but the file I have has thousands of them, far too many to recreate. When I create new hyperlinks and export as PDF, the new hyperlinks work just fine. The old ones, however, do not exist any longer.

Has anyone come across a solution for this?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @Dooceswild.

There is no solution (at this time) within the Affinity suite for working with externally created PDF files that contain hyperlinks. Those hyperlinks will not be recognized if you Open or Place the PDF file into an Affinity file. 

However, once you have an Affinity file with the hyperlinks, you can export a PDF with the links intact. Then, just make sure you save the Affinity file, and make future updates using it rather than opening the PDF again.

Perhaps someday the PDF importer will be improved to also capture the hyperlinks, but we don't know if that will happen, nor when.

[Dooceswild]

Unfortunately, that's what I thought. Another unfortunate thing is that it sometimes keeps them while exporting and sometimes doesn't, but never allows them to be edited. So if a document has a bunch of them, they may pass through but link absolutely incorrectly. Pretty much ruined my document, I'm going to have to find another way to edit it.

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, Dooceswild said:

Another unfortunate thing is that it sometimes keeps them while exporting and sometimes doesn't, but never allows them to be edited.

Sorry, but I don't understand that. 

They will be kept while exporting if you have "Include Hyperlinks" selected in the Export settings (Advanced section). And whether that is on or not is initially determined by the PDF Export Preset you choose.

I have no idea what you mean by not allowing them to be edited.

[Dooceswild]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Sorry, but I don't understand that. 

They will be kept while exporting if you have "Include Hyperlinks" selected in the Export settings (Advanced section). And whether that is on or not is initially determined by the PDF Export Preset you choose.

I have no idea what you mean by not allowing them to be edited.

I am saying that I can load a PDF which contains hyperlinks. Whether I do anything with inserting new ones or not, upon export, some of those original hyperlinks remain, but typically they are now linked improperly.
 

As previously discussed, I cannot edit the hyperlinks.
 

Hope that clarifies.  

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Dooceswild said:

I am saying that I can load a PDF which contains hyperlinks. Whether I do anything with inserting new ones or not, upon export, some of those original hyperlinks remain, but typically they are now linked improperly

None of the hyperlinks will be imported by Affinity. If some appear to be imported you may be being fooled by your PDF viewer. Some will attempt to recognize URLs and automatically make a link, but it's possible that the original PDF had something the viewer might interpret as a URL but which was a hyperlink to a different address. 

24 minutes ago, Dooceswild said:

As previously discussed, I cannot edit the hyperlinks.

That's because they don't exist, as they weren't imported. You would need to add them.

[jango_fx]

I am facing the same problem, but I don't understand how the workaround is meant.

Even if I do not include a PDF but another Publisher document that contains hyperlinks in a parent document, the links of the child document are deleted during export.

The only solution I have found so far is to export both documents with every update and then merge them again outside Affinity, e.g. with macOS preview... :(

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, jango_fx said:

Even if I do not include a PDF but another Publisher document that contains hyperlinks in a parent document, the links of the child document are deleted during export.

I'm not sure what your document setup is, and what you are considering "the workaround".  Please provide more details of what you're trying to do, document structure, etc.

[BBG3]

I have the same problem. I need to keep the hyperlinks in the PDF files that I'm going to edit! 🙁

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, BBG3 said:

I have the same problem. I need to keep the hyperlinks in the PDF files that I'm going to edit! 🙁

For that, today, you need to use a true PDF editor. 

[BBG3]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

For that, today, you need to use a true PDF editor. 

Thanks @walt.farrell. What application do you recommend? I know Adobe Acrobat does.

[walt.farrell]

16 hours ago, BBG3 said:

What application do you recommend?

I have no specific recommendations to make; sorry.