PDF XChange Forum

I am using the latest PDF-XChange Pro v4.0168 and PDF-XChange Viewer v2.0(build 42.4) on WinXP and cannot seem to get links to be active when creating a pdf. For some reason this was the case with an earlier version of Pro, so I upgraded just to be safe.

On the Settings|Links I have checked "Analyze URLs in Printed Text" and "Detect Filenames and Convert To PDF Links" and have even tried most combinations of these settings to no avail.

I know that the Viewer can recognize links and open them since I tried this on another file. But when I generate a pdf with Pro and then View it, I am having no luck.

Any suggestions for what I need to change to get this to work?

Hi radue,

Can you please zip and attach a copy of the file in question to this post and we'll take a look at the issue.

Thanks,
Chris

Here is a very simple example that also includes my ppr file.

Hi radue,

The Print Driver can only create active links from literal links http:// and mailto:, If you have PRO then in IE you should have PDF-XChange a Toolbar icon, trying converting the same page using that. The MSOffice toolabr addin can translate embedded links "click here" and should create the same documents with active links intact.

Give it a try and let me know the results.

Regards,
Chris

Using PDF-XChange on the IE8 toolbar works.

What about Firefox? I don't see the equivalent.

Also, I have other documents that have been created with fully qualified http:/ links, but when I 'Print' them to PDF-XChange print driver, the links are not active although they are shown as underlined & blue. Why doesn't this work?

If it is all possible, I sure would like to see PDF-XChange print driver be able to make links active in the resulting pdf. Can you elaborate?
-- Thanks

Hi radue,

the toolbar addin is only integrateble in to MS Office software components - Word, Excel, Publisher, Internet explorer, etc. and is not Firefox compatible.

Can you send a copy of the literal links that are not working in the resulting PDF and I'll check it out.

And there should be no reason as to the literal http:// not to result in active links.

Regards,
Chris

When you reprint an existing pdf file to PDF-XChange almost all links will be lost.

A Print Driver can recognize links which are directly present in text, like www.tracker-software.com, http://mydomen.org/goto.php?a=123&b=234, etc, but not embeded links like click here.

Many programs may print text from a pdf (and not only from pdf) as an image, as curves or as glyps indexes.

In such cases the driver cannot recognize the links - because no additional information is passed to the printer.

Consequently there is only one possible way to get all links and that is to use some addin (hence the Tool bar's on your office application) which can examine a document, collect any additional information about the links within and pass it to the driver after the file has been generated - but before it is saved to disk.

Hope that helps to explain.

Hi!

I thought I'd weigh in on this topic for clarification.

I've been using PDF-XChange PRO for years and I'm a registered user for V3 and 4. I generally use it for creating PDFs for documents and web pages and it is perfect for most.

Of late I have been creating PDF of web pages that have embedded URL links that I would like to preserve, and I see that it PDF-XChange on its own does not keep embedded links as I understand from from other postings that this is a Windows printer driver issue. An I correct so far?

I further understand that there is a way from IE to use PDF-XChange that would preserve embedded links, though for Firefox or Chrome there is no solution at present - as I and many others have dumped IE (though the Chinese gov't loves it). Is this also correct?

First, is there any solution that Tracker is working on to solve this issue?

Second, if there isn't can I make a suggestion? I have been using two "service/products" that seem like reasonable solutions and I don't know if you can "copy" it too. They seem to generate the PDF online and then "send" it back for storage and they save the embedded links nicely. One is PrintFriendly and the second PDFOnline. I bet you already know them. I suspect that they are parsing the HTML for the links and then pre-format the PDF with those links and then generate the PDF.

Is that note something Tracker can do too?

Is there anything you could do to keep me with one set of PDF creation programs in dealing with the embedded link issue and make my live that much more easier?

Best regards!
Avraham

Hello Avraham,

You are right in all your assumptions.

and now to answer your questions.
There is no way for the moment that we can get this additional info without the help of an add-on that will be gathering extra information and will be passing it to the printer drivers, and there are no such add-ons available for FF, Opera or Chrome at this moment.

We are producing end user printing drivers and the service you describe is a web based one. While it is easy to use it can cause lots of troubles with secured websites, and such where authorization is needed. The other side is that this will require a lot of server computing power and bandwidth which you are paying for each time using that service but would expect it to be free of extra charge and included in the fixed price of our driver when using it for printing.

The solution for you for now is to use IE and the add-on there to print those web pages (I myself am sometimes loading it when I need to print a web page and preserve the links, though I am an Opera fan).

Regards,
Stefan

Hi,
This is a feature that I would really appreciate too. I sometimes I do apowerpoint presentation with embedded links that are live during the presentation but not in the pdf that Pdf-xchange generates. Replacing an embedded link with a long URL in a ppt slide could be very distracting and is certainly ugly. Can the pdf-xchange printer driver be programmed to analyze the embedded link and reconstruct the link in the pdf with the same hyperlink? Alternatively, is there a workaround without having to manually make each embedded link explicit?

Hello, JohnCLeBlanc

You've replied to a 12 year old topic, but we do offer this now! Our "standard printer" now includes an MS Office toolbar addin which offers this functionality natively.
It is not possible to do this while printing (because the printing application does not send link information to physical printers), but through the use of this toolbar addin, we can collect that information directly, instead of relying on the print function.

Once you have the Standard printer installed (Included with the PDF-XChange PRO bundle), you will see a new "PDF-Xchange" tab appear in your Office applications: Using this will, by default, retain hyperlinks as you need.

Kind regards,

Hi Daniel,
I have an additional question to that topic:
Does the OfficeAddin creates automatically a separate print driver called "PDF-XChange Office" in addition to "PDF-XChange Standard". We licensed PDF-XChange Pro.
It is a little bit confusing for me, because sometimes this printer is visible in MS Word and sometimes not.
In Windows Printer Menu, The "PDF-XChange Office" driver is listed, while "PDF-XChange Office" is not. .

Thank you and best regards!

Hi BMT216A,

I have seen that occasionally, I believe it is Windows doing this. You should find it works the same. Do you?

Thank you Paul.
Yes and no...
Settings are obviously the same, but if I choose the office version, I haven't got access to saved profiles in the Standard version.
It seems to me that Windows adds the office version every time I use the Office Addin to create a pdf.
It's not a issue for me, just wanted to ask on behalf of interest.

Hello, BMT216A

The printer we create should always be called "PDF-XChange Standard", the only time I have seen a "PDF-Xchange Office" printer being added, is if you are using a third party app, which also utilizes our products SDK's. Perhaps one of the other apps you are using has some of our features integrated with it . In any case, it is not something to be concerned about, you can just ignore that version of the printer if it being re-created each time you remove it.

Kind regards,