How to place an image with hyperlink.

[Pawel Dobkowski]

Hi, I have problem with images with hyperlink, when I am using paste option, everything is working correctly, but when I am using place method link is removed. Is there an option to keep and later update url in source file only, without linking all urls again?

Regards
Paweł

[walt.farrell]

I'm not sure what you mean by "image with hyperlink". Can you provide more information? What kind of image? How does it have a hyperlink?

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Pawel Dobkowski,

I'm aware that it's possible to copy/paste an image from another Publisher document and the hyperlink assigned to that particular image (or object) will be retained. If you attempt to file > place an image this will not include the hyperlink as the image is being placed from an external source outside of affinity, so there wouldn't be a hyperlink included to begin with.

As Walt mentioned, we might need a bit more information in regards to your workflow.

[Pawel Dobkowski]

Thx, for replays, so it seems that what I needed is just impossible. In Affinity you can't place object with hyperlink.

What is strange, when you have have one objects put in a document in two ways: one placed and one pasted, then placed object have hyperlink as long as pasted object is in the document. When you deleted it hyperlink vanish. So Affinity konows that placed object have a hyperlink, but  can't import whole information. Its looks like it is a bug or more likely an omission. Hope Serif will fix it soon.

 

[walt.farrell]

Again, what kind of Placed image, and how does it have a hyperlink? 

 

[Pawel Dobkowski]

QR code (vector) with a url hyperlink added to it. It will be much easier update it only in one place when url will be changed.

[Pawel Dobkowski]

It is placed from Affinity file.

[walt.farrell]

How is the hyperlink added? 

[walt.farrell]

I think the issue is that when you Place a file, it's contents are not visible to the parent document. From the perspective of the parent document (where it's Placed) it is just an image. You can't interact with anything inside it, unless you double-click on it to open it for editing. 

And that means the hyperlink in it is invisible, too.

[Pawel Dobkowski]

The power of linked documents is that they carry all information. It is hard to understand why this attribute is neglected. As I metioned before, when you have same object placed and pasted, both of them has hyperlinks, so it is not true that you can't interact with it.

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, Pawel Dobkowski said:

As I metioned before, when you have same object placed and pasted, both of them has hyperlinks, so it is not true that you can't interact with it.

Can you provide a sample .afpub document that shows this?

[Pawel Dobkowski]

It is not necessary, I am grateful for your help and I understand, that Affinity is a great program but in some cases little unpolished. You have to embrace a limitations and hope that next releases will improve what you need. I have to find a way around, maybe with symbols, or assets, if not i will just paste what I need.  Thank you for your time 🙂

Paweł

[Hangman]

Hi @Pawel Dobkowski,

How exactly are you wanting the hyperlink to work, is it designed to open a website, another document or something else entirely?

If you have added the hyperlink to your QR Code at the point of creation then placing the QR Code in Publisher will work without issue but you will need to use a QR Reader or the camera on your phone to read the URL and open the link.

If you want to create a physical hyperlink that you can click on once exported to a pdf file then you will need to add the URL as a Hyperlink in Publisher.

Both work when using placed files but equally I may have misunderstood what it is you're trying to do. If you can provide a little more information as to what and how exactly you are looking to link and where the linked item resides that would be really helpful.

Online Links

 

Likewise, if you're looking to link to other pdf documents, you will need to add the relevant file link directly in Publisher...

Document Link

[Pawel Dobkowski]

My goal was to make library of QR codes in one affinity file, and add to them url hyperlinks in this file. I have to use them in product catalog (using place method) so if somebody is using printed version they will scan QR code if it is in digital version just click linked QR code. QR codes are used in this catalogue many times in different places, but sometimes urls have to be changed (because names of links changed). It will be much easier to change them only in a library file, not to search  in a catalogue and change all of them manually.

Sorry if my english is not precise enough to expain what I want achieve.

Regards

Paweł

[thomaso]

25 minutes ago, Pawel Dobkowski said:

My goal was to make library of QR codes in one affinity file, and add to them url hyperlinks in this file.

This is possible, see this PDF which contains a gray square as QR-code placeholder + an hyperlink attached to this image.

v1105 img hyperlink.pdf

The unclear part was rather your "images with hyperlinks" that you want to place in Affinity.

Unfortunately, if I open or place such an exported Affinity PDF including an hyperlink in Affinity again then its existing hyperlink is ignored by Affinity, regardless of "Passthrough", "Interpret" or opened.

That means, you can't place such "images" (alias PDF) but you can create your "QR-code database" in Affinity and copy/paste the image-link combinations into another .afpub for export with hyperlinks included.

[Hangman]

Hi @Pawel Dobkowski,

Many thanks for your update and for explaining what it is you're looking to do... So this should be perfectly possible I think...

There are two considerations as you say, print and digital which will require two steps...

1. For print you will of course add the URL at the point of QR Code creation so the QR Code can be scanned
2. For digital you can 'Place' the generated QR Code in Publisher, select it and add a Hyperlink using the same URL

7 hours ago, Pawel Dobkowski said:

Sometimes urls have to be changed (because names of links changed). It will be much easier to change them only in a library file, not to search  in a catalogue and change all of them manually.

I would create all your QR Codes with their associated URLs in whichever QR Code generation software you use, export them all as PDF files and then create a Publisher document to store them, one QR Code per page and save this as your QR Code Library file which you can export as a PDF file...

 

This will then allow you to place the respective page (QR Code) in your Publisher Catalogue document. If you set your Publisher Catalogue file up with the 'Image Placement' policy set to 'Prefer Linked', then when any one of the QR Code URLs is updated you can generate the replacement QR Code with it's new URL and replace it in your QR Code Library file, apply the replacement URL to the page in the Library file and Save and re-export the Library file which will automatically update the relevant instances of the old QR Code in your Catalogue file with the new version.

 

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

Unfortunately, if I open or place such an exported Affinity PDF including an hyperlink in Affinity again then its existing hyperlink is ignored by Affinity, regardless of "Passthrough", "Interpret" or opened.

This works in v2.X when placing the Affinity generated PDF, i.e., Place a QR Code in a Publisher document, select it and apply the relevant URL as a Hyperlink. Export it as a PDF, then place the exported PDF in a new Publisher document, re-export and the URL is maintained and can be clicked on to launch the URL and of course scanned to achieve the same thing.

I'm slightly unsure why this isn't working in v1.10.6, having tested it there I'm seeing the same thing, so I don't know if this is a perhaps a bug?

 

An alternative option would be to make use of the new Data Merge option coming to v2.2 of Publisher. This would allow you to to set up a simple spreadsheet containing the QR Code Name, File Location on your HD and the URL for the QR Code.

 

 

You could use the Data Merge option in Publisher to directly apply the respective URL's to each of your QR Codes in the Library file from the spreadsheet and then when a QR Code URL is updated you can simply generate the replacement QR Code, Save it, overwriting the old QR Code in the same location on your HD, update the Spreadsheet with the new URL and update the Data Source in Publisher's Data Merge Manager. Once re-exported this will update the QR Code in your Publisher Catalogue file, assuming you have 'Automatically update linked resources when modified externally' checked in the General Settings in Publisher.

 

 

This, in theory, should allow you to maintain a library of QR Codes and a relatively automated way to place and update the QR Codes in both your Publisher Library and Catalogue files.

I hope that all makes some sort of sense but please feel free to ask  any questions if I've not explained things so well...

 

[walt.farrell]

If you needed the same QR code and hyperlink multiple times within a single document, and you also own Designer, then you could also use Symbols.

1. Create/paste the QR code.
2. Add the hyperlink
3. Switch to Designer Persona and make it a Symbol.

But if you need them in more than one file, keeping them within a Publisher document you can copy/paste from may be simpler in the long run.

[Pawel Dobkowski]

Thank you for yours sugestions, I will try them and see which one is the best.