InDesign tip: add hyperlinks to objects for PDF without requiring export as Interactive PDF
I’m working on a newsletter that gets delivered as a PDF via email and download. I need the PDF to support old versions of Acrobat because much of the readership are on old IT-managed PCs.
I’m adding to the latest issue some icons for the publisher’s Twitter and Facebook pages but the problem is that the only way to have hyperlinked objects in InDesign is by turning them into buttons, which can only be used when exporting as an ‘Interactive PDF’. Interactive PDFs aren’t particularly compatible with old versions so I found a solution to add hyperlinks to objects without requiring an Interactive PDF for them to work.
Basically, use anchored objects. An anchored object is any object, or group of objects, pasted into a text box so that it reflows along with the text. Just create a text box big enough for your object, select it as you would select text, and apply the hyperlink to the selected ‘text’. Since regular PDFs are quite happy with hyperlinked text, this workaround works perfectly.
I don’t understand why you can’t simply select any object and apply a hyperlink to it, but this let’s you do just that with minimal hassle.
